"...with a little help from my friends", Part II

James Fee cracks me up every time. First he does not dance on ArcObjects' grave but praises it, secondly he exults Google Earth Builder until he, well, hits nothing, and best of all he sees off Esri's webADF to welcome its REST API. Currently in the business of hosting data on the web, his head is not in the clouds but bolted on tight by business concerns, mostly clients' who gives them a certain sharpness as they're always right, right?

If you read this blog, you'll have noticed that I have tried a few new things. I used a little java scripting with Google Maps API, did current affairs and complete history projects on QGIS desktop then served both on giscloud.com, and tried a web service for small oil companies and agencies. I recently returned to la familia with Esri's Kuwaiti distributor, as I had been Esri's petroleum industry manager prior, after geoscience for GIS at Halliburton - in particular a Unix ArcView extension... though the only Avenue (its scripting language) I see today is the Mall of same name in Kuwait City!

Through my travels and travails, I found the single item that sets Esri apart is its Model Builder (MB), which allows to concatenate and package geo-processing tasks. My LinkedIn group discussion asking others' experiences echoes mine that it doesn't come easily, but it is powerful nonetheless, especially when wrapped into Python. Using MB has been a great training tool, the basis of my two most read Slideshare posts. I will revamp it to use the the public RMOTC dataset, complete with surface GIS and subsurface geological and geophysical data.

... don't touch that dial, stay tuned!