Programming for GIS

Programming for GIS

What classes are there out there? What do I want to learn? Pre-requisite: any computer programming class, any GIS class

A bit beyond the basics

• How data are stored (not just raster or vector! I've heard that already)

Things common to most programming languages

• values and references
• assignments and expressions
• decisions and branches
• loops and iterations
• functions
• modules
• objects
• linear, event-driven and mvc

Geometry for Geographers-- Calculations based on spatial features

• extents and bounding boxes
• length, perimeter, area, volume
• midpoint, center, centroid
• fuzziness
• error

Working data from other sources

• The nature of GPS data
• Tabular data
• Scanned paper maps and photos
• Autocad drawings
• Legacy data (Coverages, elevation data, other sources)

Working with very large data sets

ArcMap

• Building Definition Queries
• Building expressions for labelling.
• Special symbologies?
• Maplex?

ArcGIS Extensions

• Spatial and 3D analyst
• Network analyst

VB + ArcObjects

• What does it take to get set up for VB programming in ArcGIS? Visual Studio?

The many faces of Microsoft, what can we safely ignore?
VBscript Jscript Java VBA VB C/C++/C# OLE COM DOM ActiveX .net

Python

• Model Builder
  • ArcMap
  • ArcCatalog

SQL

• Database design
• Using access
• Building reports with Crystal

Beyond ArcGIS

• ArcIMS
• GRASS
• Mapserver
• Exploring FWtools
• SAS

Resources

• Coping with change :-)

Projects

• Creating a data entry page for attributing.
• Finding the highest values in a field and displaying them; sub-selecting on type.
• Working with ArcPad Application Builder
• Spatial statistics
• Image classification
• Write a script to clean data
• Write a script to convert data from one format to another
• Write a script to extract data from a set of layers using the same extent
• Write a script to put all data into the same projection