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Visual Basic and GIS bass_playa78d 01-20-2005
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Posted by bass_playa78d on January 20, 2005, 1:27 pm
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 Hi,

I have taken a course in Visual Basic, and have a general idea about
what it can be used for.

Other than making forms where users enter information, I understand
that VB may be good for querying through lists of data. My question
would be, is this the limit and particularity to which VB is applied
in GIS (sorting through a database to query an entry?)

Can VB be applied in any other ways specifically to a GIS, in other
words, in spatial terms somehow, or in special conjunction with any
ArcGIS extensions/other GIS programs? Firthermore, if VB is simply
used for user-entry data and querying databases, is it actually the
best language to do this for a GIS?

I am thinking of taking an Advanced GIS Diploma, and notice that
VB/VB.NET are the languages of choice for the program. I'm just
wondering if there are any alternatives- cause when I was studying VB
there didn't seem to be a whole lot of connection between it and
GIS... furthermore, the form design seems to be slightly dated
graphically. Not a complaint, but an observation.

Thanks


Posted by peruviangeek on January 20, 2005, 2:30 pm
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 I have seen VB being used to create a whole suite of tools on top of
ArcGIS. The reason why it is used to widely is because it is an easy
language to learn.

Is it the best language to do GIS??? Hell no.
Is it good enough for *most* people doing GIS??? (Arguably) *yes*.

However, if you want an "easy to program" language, I would recommend
you to stick with one of the .NET ones. Within the world of ArcGIS
thread safety is not an issue now, but it will surely be in the future.
VB6 is not thread safe but VB.NET is.

Regards,

Ragi Yaser Burhum


bass_playa78d wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have taken a course in Visual Basic, and have a general idea about
> what it can be used for.
>
> Other than making forms where users enter information, I understand
> that VB may be good for querying through lists of data. My question
> would be, is this the limit and particularity to which VB is applied
> in GIS (sorting through a database to query an entry?)
>
> Can VB be applied in any other ways specifically to a GIS, in other
> words, in spatial terms somehow, or in special conjunction with any
> ArcGIS extensions/other GIS programs? Firthermore, if VB is simply
> used for user-entry data and querying databases, is it actually the
> best language to do this for a GIS?
>
> I am thinking of taking an Advanced GIS Diploma, and notice that
> VB/VB.NET are the languages of choice for the program. I'm just
> wondering if there are any alternatives- cause when I was studying VB
> there didn't seem to be a whole lot of connection between it and
> GIS... furthermore, the form design seems to be slightly dated
> graphically. Not a complaint, but an observation.
>
> Thanks



Posted by Jatin on January 20, 2005, 8:36 pm
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peruviangeek wrote:
> VB6 is not thread safe but VB.NET is.

Are you sure of what you have mentioned?

This may not be the right forum to discuss VB, but check out

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vbcon98/html/vbconapartmentmodelmultithreadinginvisualbasic.asp

Jatin
============




Posted by dananrg on January 22, 2005, 4:14 am
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It seems to be the case that if you want to do research or actually
program your own GIS from scratch, or program some other stand-alone
piece of GIS software, C++ would be a wise choice. Just like if you
want to code your own operating system, you'd also choose C or C++ over
VB.

For extending and customizing ESRI products, VB6 and VBA appear to be
the most widely used and, evidently, those languages will be supported
for years to come on the ESRI platform, even though the core software
is going to .NET. Some will complain about VB not being cross-platform,
but if one is investing in a career utilizing ESRI products, that's
probably not a concern worth having. ESRI presently is the market
leader in GIS and will likely remain so for years to come. I imagine
the vast majority of GIS shops use ESRI products, where Microsoft is
the only significant platform.

What type of limitations for ESRI-based GIS do people here believe
VB.NET to have vs. C++? What makes C++ better for customizing and
extending ESRI products? And what is the learning curve of C++ vs.
VB.NET?

I've also heard C# is an up and coming language for ESRI-based GIS. Any
comments about C#?

For those who use ESRI products exclusively, which language do you find
most valuable for doing your work? If you were starting over today,
knowing what you know presently, which one language would you learn for
the purpose of extending and customizing ESRI products?

- Dana



Posted by Tero Markus Ronkko on January 23, 2005, 11:51 am
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> For those who use ESRI products exclusively, which language do you find
> most valuable for doing your work? If you were starting over today,
> knowing what you know presently, which one language would you learn for
> the purpose of extending and customizing ESRI products?

C# or VB.net. Probably vb.net because it has full support and wide range of
documentation and code examples available. Wider than C# afaik. It is easy
to learn and you can do (practically) everything with it in ArcGIS
environment.


--
Tero-Markus C Rönkkö | "If i could change something in my life,
dino@batmud | I would definitely do more mistakes to feel
www.oivalla.net | sorry about"


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