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Getting Started with GIS?
The Plan 9 Bunny asks: "A company I work for is just getting starting to work with GIS and they want me to get it up and running. However, I don't know a damn thing about it. There's a slew of information on the Internet -- of widely varying quality. If the software is from ESRI, what would be a satisfactory starting point when it comes to laying the latticework for learning GIS? A plethora of books have been written about it, but like any subject, some are better than others. Also, I'm interested to hear about GIS horror stories: what to avoid, what NOT to purchase, etc... The ultimate goal is to have the data available on a publicly accessible webserver so clients can access it without needing the $30,000 worth of hardware and software. Can this be done with a UNIX-based solution, or are we yet again stuck in an NT world?" Those interested in GIS may wish to check out the last article we did on the subject. Considering the question, this older article on GIS mapping may also be of interest.
Getting Started with Geographic Information Systems by Keith Clarke (ISBN 0-13-294786-2). Short and skimmable for important info. It's a bit dated (1996) but will give you a quick overview of GIS terms before you move on to more specific needs (ESRI vs. Intergraph), and your local library probably has a copy. There are shortcomings to both packages, and you'll need to know something about what your people want to do with the GIS in order to select the best package. And, yes, Virginia, there is a Unix version. My employer (a university in the northeast) is a Sun house and we use ESRI's packages on a dozen SunBlade 1000s.
Give them an inch and they'll take a foot. Much more than that, you won't have a leg to stand on.
Their Spacial Database Engine (SDE) runs on many databases including Unix, but those who have had to work with it in my agency havn't had much good to say about it. It does work, but backwards compatibility doesn't seem to be a priority with ESRI and our developers have to check everything. Whenever I bring it up, even in the GIS department, there is always a groan of discontent.
ArcInfo is a windows only based product as of version 8. You can still get ArcInfo version 7.something for Solaris but last I heard they don't plan on making another Unix version. They do alot with "map objects" which is as I understand it very useful in Visual Basic and other COM based RADs but useless outside of windows.
They do have a new version of ArcIMS (Internet Mapping Server) which runs on the Struts framework from the Jakarta project. We just got version 4.0 a couple days ago but havn't opened the box yet. Hopefully it will be better than previous versions. I can say that ArcIMS 3.1 was MUCH better than ArcIMS version 3.0.
As a web developer I have been lusting over MapInfo's products but alas we already have ERSI in house and MapInfo and ESRI have never played well together.
If I wanted to deploy on a unix platform, just from what I have heard and seen thus far, I would look at MapInfo's product unless there is something you need that they can't do and ESRI can.
I too have been getting up to speed on GIS this year. I'm doing a Postgrad Dip in it at the moment. From all accounts ESRI is the defacto standard amongst most governmental bodies - councils, states, defense etc. Here in NZ ESRI is very strong - about 11 from 14 regional councils use ESRI. And yes it is windows only, the internal scripting which used to be Avenue, now uses Visual Basic. You also have objects that you can chuck in other VB applications to provide instant access to maps. This is not so bad when you consider that as a proportion of the total cost of the GIS, the hardware and software represent a small percentage of the total outlay - most of the expense comes back to data collection and management.
For a good theoretical background on GIS, Burrough et al (1998) Principles of Geographical Information Systems is proving quite good. For practical experience try ESRI's campus where a number of free and/or cheap (compared to training courses) practical courses in GIS are provided.
Hope this helps!
Cheers Gav
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but the USGS has made its TIGR data set available for FREE download. This data is dated (looking at some of the places I've lived, it looks like it's about 15-20 years old now), but if you're learning how to work with GIS data it's good enough.
And did I mention it's FREE? This is a non-trivial concern - I'm pretty sure this is the dataset that Bruce Perens bought a number of years ago to turn over to OSS projects, at a cost of something like $2000. But now you can download it from their website.
If you go this way, you'll need at least 16 GB for the data. You'll also need to write your own ISO-8821 decoder. It's not too hard - it's not even hard to write tools that can read the compressed tar balls directly. But knowing what to do with that data is another matter....
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken