Spatial Data Management Group Meeting Notes for August 17, 2006

Note taker: David Hockman-Wert
Treats: Matt Gregory

Attendees:

Theresa V, Keith O, Terralyn V, Matt G, Dave H-W, Heather

Topic of Meeting: Report on 2005 ESRI User Conference

Keith reported on all the good and bad things he learned at the ESRI user conference (see Keith’s notes), but he came back with entirely too little “vendor schwag” for some people’s tastes , definitions 2.1 and 7, not the others!)

Link to Keith's notes:

Meetings:

Mid Willamette Users Meeting in Salem, August 23, 1-4pm – anyone going?
Northwest GIS User Group Meeting in Spokane, WA September 13, 14, 15. Kelly is thinking about going
LTER All Scientist Meeting, Sept. 20-23, Estes Park, CO. Theresa going
Nearest Neighbor Meeting in Minneapolis in August: Matt and Janet O

Training needs:

Remote Sensing workshop (two days) in February 2007. One day will be hands-on training from Anne Nolin, Geosciences.

Data

No new news about the DOQs; getting them from BLM.
Theresa and Terralyn attended the Spatial Data Repository Meeting, which is a gathering of OSU entities (Forestry, Geosciences, and Institute for Natural Resources) whose goal is to make spatial data more readily available to users on the OSU campus. The College of Forestry is getting the Metadata Explorer up and running in version 9 and planning to serve some of the ‘data/fordata’ data in a test run. They plan to add WMS (web mapping services) and WFS (web feature services) to ArcIMS to enhance its capability. They are going to test the speed of accessing ‘data/fordata’ via the WMS versus the network. If you have a GIS layer that you want Theresa to put on the new system to test, let her know. Geosciences has a lot of student data to serve, and INR has a lot of archival data to serve as well.

GIS Day Planning:

On hold until school resumes in the fall.

7. Round table:

  • Matt: He’s running GNN models at different resolutions. (That’s all I understood.)
  • Heather: Doing a lot of database work in SQL Server, setting it up so that the updating becomes automated, writing a lot of SQL. Either Matt or Heather mentioned the utility of ArcReader, which allows a GIS user to export MXDs as readable maps (PDF?) for non-GIS users or with accompanying distributable data as well.
  • Terralyn: Explained the SAN (Storage Area Network). This is a series of RAID disks that are linked to one another, with one or more servers on the front end that are able to use the capacity of the entire network of disks. So when more disk space is needed, we don’t need to get a new server, but just more disk space. It allows for load balancing among the different requests. Only one site or entry point is accessed by the user, but multiple servers and disks may be accessed.
  • Keith: Check out My Wonderful World, the National Geographic geographic education site for kids. http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/ (Dave especially likes the Test Your Global IQ portion. http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/global_iq.html )
  • Dave: Still in vacation mode. For a great backcountry experience in Banff National Park, check out Shadow Lake Lodge: Finally finished his notes on the USGS GIS Workshop. Contact him if you’re interested in seeing a list of websites discussed at the conference or his workshop report. (see October 2006 images of the month).

    Next Meeting September 14th:

    Notes: Keith

    Treats: Terralyn