GIS User Base
Implementing Telvent’s ArcFM Silverlight 2.1.2:
Useful Findings
By Chris Cushenbery, Principal Consultant, SSP Innovations
For those who may not be aware, Telvent provides a sample rich internet application (RIA) client named ArcFM Silverlight 2.1.2. It is built on Esri’s ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight version 2.1 and is compatible with ArcGIS Server 10 SP2/ArcFM Server 10.0.2. You can give it a try here.
Having recently implemented ArcFM Silverlight 2.1.2 for a customer I thought it might be useful to list a few of my findings in case you may be running into the same challenges:
Licensing - for those that have dealt with ArcGIS/ArcFM Server licensing in the past I feel your pain and understand the challenges it can bring. However, it looks like Esri and Telvent may have simplified the process with version 10. When implementing a distributed multi-tier ArcGIS Server architecture, as illustrated to the right, only the Server Object Containers (SOC) machines require an ArcGIS Server and ArcFM Server license.
Using ArcGIS Online maps - when configuring the ArcFM Silverlight 2.1.2 to use either the World Street Map or World Imagery services from ArcGIS Online as the basemap layer you will need to take into consideration the following:
- Basemap coordinate system will be in WGS 1984 which results in functionality such as "navigate to X/Y coordinates" requiring the user to know their state plane coordinates in WGS 1984
- Max scale for World Street Map is 1:4500 and World Imagery is 1:1100 which results in the user only being able to zoom into this level ; typically users will need to have the ability to zoom in further
- To get around both of these issues you will need to wrap the ArcGIS Online service into an MXD using a state plane coordinate system for your data location and then create a local ArcGIS Server map service
Using Search Functionality - the search functionality provided in ArcFM Silverlight 2.1.2 performs a search on the selected layer across all fields for the value entered. For example, using the sample layer "Building" with two fields "House_Num" and "Street_Name" the user enters "1928 Montview" as search criteria. No results are found because the search functionality is looking for the entire string "1928 Montview" in both fields. The data "1928 Montview" is separated into "House_Num" and "Street_Name" fields. To have the search return results the user would need to search for either "1928" or "Montview" and then locate the appropriate record.
I hope these ArcFM Silverlight 2.1.2 findings on licensing, using ArcGIS Online maps, and using Search functionality was useful and will save you time on your implementations. For further clarifications and considerations when implementing ArcFM Server for Silverlight you can get more detailed information from Telvent in this recently released article.
--November 2, 2011