Preface

Over the last two years, I have written three books on ArcGIS technology. Each book covers different topics and fields of this increasingly ubiquitous technology. Although I used examples and various real-life project approaches to explain the technology in all my books, this is the first book where the content evolves with the help of examples. I have been working with Esri ArcGIS since 2005 when ArcGIS 9.1 was released, so writing this title from a technological point of view was not difficult. In fact, it was thrilling. The challenging part was to come up with three unique real-life examples and to build them up as I wrote the book. Each example should target certain features of the technology and explain them along the way.

These three examples are all from my own imagination and they are not linked to or correlate with any actual projects that I personally worked on or witnessed. You will not find any of these examples in Esri's help or on any online resource. All the code that is available in this book is written from scratch for this book that you are holding in your hands.

The title of this book was designed for those who want to start using the ArcGIS technology or have been using it and want to learn more about how they can customize ArcGIS to do more. There are going to be three themes running throughout the book. The first theme covers Chapter 2, App 1 – the Cell Tower Analysis Tool, Chapter 3, Mapping Signal Strength, and Chapter 4, Real-time Maneuvering, which are tailored for beginners and developers. It features a Cell Tower Analysis Tool that displays a cell phone tower's signal range and signal strength on the map and shows you how cell phones connect—in simulated real time—to the tower with the strongest signal, all on top of ArcGIS for Desktop. You will learn ArcGIS add-ins for development.

The second theme covers Chapter 5, App 2 - Extending ArcObjects, Chapter 6, Reviews and Ratings, and Chapter 7, Advanced Searching, and is targeted at those who want to achieve more with ArcGIS. This theme features a restaurant mapping application that will be used to filter, search, and interact with restaurants on the map; it will also be used to view the reviews and the ratings of different users. You will learn how to write some ArcObjects code to work with geodatabases, query feature classes, and relationships. The last theme covers Chapter 8, App 3 – Advanced ArcObjects, Chapter 9, Excavation Cost Calculation, and Chapter 10, Saving and Retrieving Excavation Designs and is designed for those who are willing to try advanced programming. This theme features an excavation planning manager application. This application will propel the reader to the advanced stage, where they will write a real-life business-related deployable application. The Excavation Planning Manager helps construction workers plan their excavation for utilities and telecom networks beforehand in a given area and at an estimated cost of excavation. The application analyses the underlying soil type and green area to find out the cost of removing these areas by doing extensive spatial analysis. You will be able to store multiple designs of excavation and determine which is the cheapest or most applicable design. Chapter 1, Getting Started with ArcGIS ties all the chapters together and explains briefly what you will learn in all of them. It will also help you get started with the installations and will also tell you about the prerequisites.

In each of the themes, you will learn new features of ArcGIS and will be able to harness these features in your own code to enhance and extend ArcGIS capability.