Attendees: Michael Guzy; Jen Burke; Andrea Laliberte; Theresa Valentine; Zhiqiang Yang; Jonathan Brooks; Ken Vance-Borland; Kelly Christiansen; Keith Olson; Matt Gregory; Ray Drapek; Sharon Clarke.
Next Meeting –Thursday, September 13, 2001, 10:00, West Conference Room FSL
Cookies – Keith
Notes – Geo
Metadata Additions Awards – Sharon, Ray (another first), Pablo
ArcGIS workshop – Jen
Pablo will be leaving in October
Jukebox is at least 6 years old and is an archive, so is NOT BACKED UP. Holds about 160 Gb. We will talk more about this at the next SDMG meeting.
Theresa will meet with Doug to delete the helpdesk hour’s page and to provide more guidance to users about where they can get help with GIS/RS issues and project design.
Sharon passed around the notes from these meetings. She also discussed plans for a letter to address the unknowns surrounding database administration for geodatabases and the need to get both a GIS and database person trained in ArcSDE, so that they can help determine what our needs will be.
Mike Guzy has a need to access SQL server data from Unix and was wondering if anyone else had the same need and would be interested in purchasing software that would allow him to do this. Terralyn mentioned that if only his group needed it, they could purchase and she could administer it. Sharon suggested he send an email to the forgis and database admin lists to see if there were others interested.
Message from Dawn Wright that ArcIMS will not be available until early fall. Sharon passed around a letter from ESRI discussing their plans for better ArcIMS support. They have been swamped with requests for support. Terralyn has moved the spatial server over to the new Sun machine-Castanea from Sequoia
Jen has a need to create metadata for non-spatial data (access databases) and has been unable to do this with ArcCatalag. Theresa Valentine said she thought this was possible and will check into it. To accomplish this for the USGS, Geo bought a metadata package called SMMS (~$600) that can be accessed over the network so that many users can have access to the software (one at a time).
Will start up in September and run on alternate sessions (one a month). Theresa will be getting together a schedule.
Tip N Tricks Topics-managing data tips and tricks-Matt, Sharon, and Terralyn
ArcGIS 8.1-Theresa (with help hopefully)
Imagine-Doug
ArcView to ArcGIS-Geo
ArcIMS-Theresa
Metadata-Geo
Output-Jonathan, Kelly C, Matt,
In addition to the session, the information will be made available on the web, which will help make some of the GIS/RS information more current.
Becky-dynamic segmentation
Jen-ArcMap
Keith-Visual Basic
Geosciences has been inundated with requests for new releases and requested patience. Distributing CD’s is not part of their job. They are hoping that the IS person, Chris Sinnett hired to deal with site licenses will ease the burden. And, hopefully there will be a new SW distribution server up this summer with the software on it and accessible via a secure web site.
No speakers have been scheduled because have been waiting for the Starker Lecture Series dates to be confirmed. (Late note- SLS dates have been set, so speakers can be contacted)
Will be held in Sun River, Idaho from Oct 10-12. For more info see: http://nwesriusers.com . Theresa is planning on going and if anyone was interested in sharing housing they should get in touch with her.
Plotters:
Seems to be a series of downed plotters. The plotter in Richardson is still waiting for repair.
FSL 345 is currently working, although it won’t print to glossy paper and has had to have service 4 times recently and occasionally chews up maps.
FSL 231 is working only Unix users and Forest Service personnel have access to it. Right now paper is an issue and it sometimes will shoot out blanks. Theresa suggested turning it off when this happens, although this doesn’t always fix the problem.
Forest Service is considering buying a very fast postscript plotter. Potential issues are access, supplies and maintenance. Theresa is checking into these issues. Terralyn said the current budget for supplies for the plotter in 345 could be used for this new plotter as the Computer Resources Groups (CRG’s) contribution.
Keith suggested saving the cut paper from unsuccessful plots and reusing. He will provide a tube to put this paper in.
College of Forestry users that need access to a plotter should be directed to FSL 345 or Kinkos.
DLT:
Theresa would like to have access to a DLT (Digital Linear Tape) drive so she can acquire all the DOQ’s for Oregon from the BLM. However this will require a lot of storage space. Currently she is getting them from the Forest Service on a request only basis and it can take several weeks to get the needed quads. Terralyn thought we could borrow a DLT from someone on campus, since we only needed if for this one time, but any money spent for this purpose should be spent on getting storage space. Theresa was going to look into how much space we would need for all the DOQ’s and Terralyn would find out how much this costs.