[postgis-users] RE: zigGIS Usage Experiences

Tue Nov 28 12:40:55 PST 2006

Of all of the approaches so far, ZigGIS is the conceptually the
'cleanest', as it is going the route of a full feature class adapter
implementation (the custom layer approach), but it also requires the
greatest amount of work, as you have to eventually implement the
functionality exposed by about a dozen interfaces.

pgArc is great for single users, but you run into problems when you need
concurrent access, or relationships with other tables in your database.
The same problems would plague the toolbox approach (which I assume
would basically be a front-end to shp2pgsql and pgsql2shp).

That's not to say that the pgArc or toolbox approaches aren't worth
pursuing.  They can probably meet some specific needs much faster than
ZigGIS will be able to.

Joshua Uyehara
joshua.uyehara at syngenta.com
Office: +1 808 337 1408 ext 34
Cell: +1 808 346 5185

-----Original Message-----
From: postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net
[mailto:postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net] On Behalf Of
Bruce Rindahl
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 9:34 AM
To: 'PostGIS Users Discussion'
Cc: 'Shaun Kolomeitz'; 'Tyler Mitchell'
Subject: RE: [postgis-users] RE: zigGIS Usage Experiences

General discussion :)

I am using pgArc for my PostGIS/ArcMap connection.  It does both
read/write with some bugs.  I hope to post the changes to 9.x soon on
the pgArc site.

There is also another effort at:
http://datashare.gis.unbc.ca/transhape/
that uses a different approach.

I looked at zigGIS and passed only because I don't program in C#.

Finally, Would there be any interest in a ArcToolbox version of
PostGIS/ArcMap ??  I have done a lot of work on toolboxes and think I
could get a proof of concept going pretty soon.  Advantages would be
Python as a scripting language, the GUI is drag and drop and the tools
could be modular (One for read, one for append, one for update, etc).
No compiling would be necessary and the scripts could be used in Model
Builder.  Comments??

Bruce Rindahl

-----Original Message-----
From: postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net
[mailto:postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net] On Behalf Of
Paolo Corti
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 12:02 PM
To: postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
Subject: Re: [postgis-users] RE: zigGIS Usage Experiences

Yes Abe
I have seen your 3ed at support.esri.com no one seemed to help you I am
sorry

Have you checked out these 3 alternatives at ArcObjects help (under
extending arcobjects)?
1) Custom Layers
2) Plug in data sources
3) OGIS compliant OLE DB providers

Plug in is not applicable (it is read only), but the other 2 are viable
Custom Layers also from .NET I was investigating if also OGIS OLE DB
could be developed in .NET (in the Help is written only VC++ realistic
for implementation, but maybe this comment is obsolete now)

in any case,
congratulations for your great job, even if ZigGis do not write ;-)

Paolo

Abe Gillespie wrote:
> 
> Sorry, zigGIS does not write.  That, of course, is the "Holy Grail" of

> these efforts.
> 
> -Abe
> 
> On 11/28/06, Paolo Corti <pcorti at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello Joshua
>> and thanks for the workaround, I will test it as ASAP It is very 
>> possibly that we could join to make some modification at ZigGis, as 
>> far as I would like in my spare time to write a connector for PostGis

>> for ArcMap.
>> First I was looking at PgArc (I also migrated that at ArcObjects 9), 
>> but I think the best approach is like ZigGis does, without a proxy 
>> shapefile, but directly reading the data.
>> I have one more question, before going on.
>> In this mailing list it was claimed, I think just from Abe, that 
>> ZigGis can read and also WRITE PostGis data. Is this correct? Because

>> from what you are writing seems that ZigGis can just read and not 
>> write, and maybe I could be not interested in continuing using 
>> ZigGis.
>> In fact I have decided to write in my spare time a full Read/Write 
>> PostGis connector for ArcMap. But before doing that I would like to 
>> deeply investigate if ZigGis already does the job.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Paolo Corti
>> http://www.paolocorti.net
>>
>>
>> joshua.uyehara wrote:
>> >
>> > Hey Paolo,
>> >
>> > Abe isn't working on it anymore, but I have been occasionally 
>> > plugging away at it myself.  The problem with adding the layer in 
>> > ArcMap is due to a minor bug.
>> >
>> > ZigGIS pulls the geometry column data from PostGIS in its native 
>> > binary format and passes it to ArcMap.  Unfortunately, PostGIS' 
>> > internal
>> binary
>> > format is not identical to the expected wkb format, so ArcMap 
>> > silently ignores it and basically treats the table as a 
>> > feature-less object class.
>> >
>> > One quick workaround is to create a view of the table that converts

>> > the geometry column with asbinary(), and then manually add the 
>> > necessary entry to the geometry_columns table.
>> >
>> > E.g.,
>> >
>> > CREATE VIEW geom_table_view AS SELECT asbinary(geom_column) as 
>> > geom_column, column2, column3, FROM geom_table; INSERT INTO 
>> > geometry_columns (f_table_schema, f_table_name, f_geometry_column, 
>> > coord_dimension, srid, type) VALUES
>> >       ('public', 'geom_table_view', 'geom_column', 2, -1, 
>> > 'MULTIPOLYGON');
>> >
>> > Change schema, table, column names, srid, etc. to match your table,
>> then
>> > specify the view as the table to be opened with ZigGIS.  It's an 
>> > ugly kludge, but I haven't had the time to fix the problem in 
>> > ZigGIS itself yet.
>> >
>> > Many of the feature class functionality hasn't been implemented 
>> > yet, so you can't do much besides display the features.  I'm 
>> > planning to add features to ZigGIS as I need them for work, but I 
>> > can't give you any timelines on it, as I'm swamped with other stuff
at the moment.
>> >
>> > Hope that helped,
>> > Joshua Uyehara
>> > joshua.uyehara at syngenta.com
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net
>> > [mailto:postgis-users-bounces at postgis.refractions.net] On Behalf Of

>> > Paolo Corti
>> > Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 6:46 AM
>> > To: postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
>> > Subject: Re: [postgis-users] zigGIS Usage Experiences
>> >
>> >
>> > Hello Abe
>> >
>> > you made a great job with your ZigGis! The ArcObjects code is
amazing!
>> >
>> > maybe you can give me a help
>> > I compiled your code for using it with ArcGis 9 (i made some little

>> > modifications at the code to get this) and .NET 2.0 It compiled 
>> > fine, but when I start ArcMap and I add a PostGIS layer, it adds 
>> > the layer on the TOC but nothing is showed/drawed on the map.
>> > Looks like geometries are not read from the shape column.
>> > I am wondering if you are still on this project, and maybe you 
>> > could give me some help, or if I am on my own and must deeply 
>> > investigate/debug myself the code in order to find what is not 
>> > going properly
>> >
>> > best regards
>> > Paolo Corti
>> > GIS Developer
>> > http://www.paolocorti.net
>> >
>> >
>> > Abe Gillespie wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Sorry for the cross post, but the zigGIS list only has 9 
>> >> subscribers with a ton more downloads than that.
>> >>
>> >> I'm curious about any experiences people are having using or even
>> >> *trying* to use zigGIS.  Is it working?  Anyone need any help?  
>> >> Any constructive criticism?  ... I haven't heard a peep yet.
>> >>
>> >> Thanks.
>> >> -Abe
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>> >>
>> >>
>> >
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