Approximately 14.000 participants were attracted to attend this year’s – already the twenty-sixth annual – ESRI International Conference in San Diego. In spite of the fact that nothing else could have been expected, even a relatively skeptical guest had to admit right from the start that everything had been worked out to perfection, down t to the smallest organizational detail. As always, most of the attendees‘ attention was focused on Jack Dangermond’s, the ESRI President, opening words in which each guest could hear the issues of his particular interest – a summary speech on the current state and trends in the ESRI future, rather necessary (yet credibly presented) vision (the thought that GIS could really help to save our planet always pleases), humanly handled praise to the men of worth in the field (the Award of the President was given indeed for SOMETHING – the project of Ordnance Survey of Great Britain – Great Britain’s national mapping agency) and the closing, high-tech level presentation on 3 giant video screens.

The number of lectures, seminars, and workshops was indeed great. The technical workshops content covered the whole line of the current ESRI products (who can try to name them all today?) and were carried out (how else) in the spirit of “what’s new in the 9.2 version”. The attendees were buried under an information avalanche whose reproduction here as a whole would not be very constructive. Let us thus present a few notes on the things that drew our attention:

ArcGIS desktop

• ArcCatalog: management of GIS projects, metadata (incl. support of international standards – ISO 19139)
• ArcMap: data collection and advanced editing, advanced cartography (work with annotations, optimalization of map compositions for on-line usage, “ruled-based” symbology, generalization, multiple representation according to scale setting)
• advanced work with CAD data (better direct visualization (line symbols, fills, text), conversion), dynamic georeferencing of CAD drawings
• advanced export to pdf

ArcGIS Extensions

• basic (3D Analyst – ArcGlobe, Spatial analyst, Network analyst) – new properties, performance, customization, goeprocessing, to sum it up – great progress, namely in 3D features
• data collection (ArcScan, Stereo Analyst, Geostatical Analyst) doubtlessly still preferably utilizable, we are not able to assess practical utilization on the Czech market
• more (ArcCadastre, Business Analyst, Goestatical Analyst, Survey analyst, Tracking Analyst) – no comment, wider applicability in the Czech environment especially in case of Tracking Analyst
• cartographic tools (Maplex, PLTS) – a significant shift, ESRI obviously reflects on the pressure from CPS products by T-Kartor, our parent company

Geodatabase

• ArcSDE: new features/items, configuration and tuning, versioning, replication, raster data management, upgrade strategy
• Advanced administration of geodatabase in different environments (Oracle, MS SQL, DB2)
• Data modeling – principles, procedures, examples

ArcGIS Server/ Image Server/ArcIMS

• ArcGIS Server: výrazně přepracované prostředí ve verzi 9.2, ArcGIS Server Manager, vytváření mapových kompozic a globů, reálná podpora celé řady standardů (též KML) a moderních trendů (např. ESB), vyspělá podpora distribuovaných řešení, řada standardních klientů, mohutná podpora vývoje v Java/J2EE a .NET; současným uživatelům ArcIMS a potenciálním zájemcům doporučujeme sledovat licenční podmínky - podle funkcionality (based, standard, advandced) a podle dosud pořízených licencí (ArcIMS, ArcSDE)
• Image Server: previously-announced significant improvement in performance, component of ArcGIS Server 9.2
• •ArcIMS: a product being constantly developed; nice examples of Java and .NET applications development, optimalization, metadata

Unfortunately, for time reasons, we missed many interesting topics (the mobile GIS, for instance) – attending all activities is the common "headache" of the conference guests.

This year, we had decided to present, together with our partners, the "GIS for Jindrichuv Hradec Region" project in posters and contributions in the "Public Administration" section. One may say that we did not fail in spite of the fact that we were surrounded by a flood of "domestic" contributions (that may even have been the reason why). Just for curiosity sake: Our (upcoming) territorially analytical documentation attracted a lot of attention of the American attendees.

To sum things up, we can say that this year’s ESRI Conference again did not disappoint. Quite on the contrary. Most of the conference attendees were leaving San Diego completely exhausted after this "marathon run".