1 Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Roger Diercks GIS Manager County of Kankakee

2 Kankakee County is located an hour south of Chicago and has been seeing unprecedented levels of growth in recent years – approx new parcels this year. This growth is anticipated to accelerate in coming years. Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Kankakee County’s Approach Fall ILGISA Conference 2006 Background The need to make parcel GIS data with current attributes easily accessible to County employees, real estate professionals, and the public was identified as priority for County GIS program. In addition to parcel attributes, access to scanned images on file in the Supervisor of Assessments’ Office was desired and considered important component of site

3 ArcIMS site that has parcel attributes that are automatically populated nightly from County parcel RDBMS Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Kankakee County’s Approach Fall ILGISA Conference 2006 The Product in a Nutshell Hyperlinks to scanned images either by clicking on parcels with ArcIMS Identify tool or added search capability Site made available to county employees and subscribers – not public at this time Parcel boundaries and other features from county’s cadastral enterprise Geodatabase also updated nightly

4 Kankakee County GIS uses ESRI technology – ArcIMS and ArcSDE as well as SQL Server Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Kankakee County’s Approach Fall ILGISA Conference 2006 Technology and Some Considerations County’s property RDBMS developed by DEVNET - MS SQL Server-based and runs on dedicated server IT Dept. expressed security concerns about direct access to DEVNET server from outside users ArcSDE and ArcIMS run on separate servers inside own domain Dedicated half T-1 connection to ArcIMS server paid for by GIS Connection to real time data not feasible, so nightly updates Copy necessary data from DEVNET server to ArcSDE Apache is web server, Servlet Connector with Tomcat as servlet engine

5 Challenges with DEVNET RDBMS Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Kankakee County’s Approach Fall ILGISA Conference 2006 More Considerations Necessary attributes scattered throughout RDBMS in multiple tables – complex structure Bottom line - difficult SQL Server replication scenario IT staff act as DBA – leery of granting outside department privileges beyond read-only Time/Personnel Until recently, Kankakee County GIS was one-person operation GIS staff have basic programming and SQL Server knowledge, but are not programmers or DBAs Bottom line – needed a solution that didn’t require large amounts of customization but that met users’ needs

6 Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Kankakee County’s Approach Fall ILGISA Conference 2006 Even More Considerations GIS/ArcIMS Challenges Parcel dimensions, block numbers, etc desired on site, but conversion of anno from AutoCAD especially difficult – had to use AutoCAD drawings in ArcMap Server in ArcIMS County’s parcels maintained in AutoCAD at the time of implementation – cumbersome conversion process ArcMap Server puts RDBMS lock on layers, so updating features and attributes can be difficult

7 Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Kankakee County’s Approach Fall ILGISA Conference 2006 Eureka!!! To deal with complex DEVNET structure, ESRI Geoprocessing were tools combined with SQL Server views used to get attributes into desired form Views in SQL Server used to join tables and customize attributes - attempt to cut down on overall process overhead ArcGIS Modelbuilder used to create model that was exported to Python script Some manipulation of attributes done using geoprocessing tools, but mostly done with SQL Server views Spatially enabled parcels view in ArcSDE solved ArcMap Server RDBMS lock Python script updates features and attributes in spatially enabled view’s underlying feature class Spatial view changes as underlying feature class is modified Geoprocessing tools called in Python to copy tables and portions of tables into ArcSDE

8 Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Kankakee County’s Approach Fall ILGISA Conference 2006 More Eureka!!! Remember Assessor’s imaging? Spatial view used to create parcel polygon layer with hyperlinks to images Because of security concerns, scanned images copied from DEVNET server to GIS server nightly Python script updates imaging layer much the same as parcels

9 Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Kankakee County’s Approach Fall ILGISA Conference 2006 Pros The Upside Relatively inexpensive solution aside from hardware and software costs Customized solution – can be adapted to meet needs as they arise – no waiting on consultants Site has decreased foot traffic and phone calls to Assessor’s Office – staff freed up to work on other projects

10 Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Kankakee County’s Approach Fall ILGISA Conference 2006 Cons The Downside Can be CPU-intensive – Python program has a lot of data to process Customized solution – can break when DEVNET makes changes to table structure & no vendor-provided tech support Administration can be time-consuming Approach results in some duplication (e.g. additional parcel layer for buffering operations, multiple stacked parcel polygons for scanned images

11 Integrating ArcIMS and Current Parcel Information Kankakee County’s Approach Fall ILGISA Conference 2006 What Does the Future Hold? ArcGIS Server? Use server side scripting (e.g. ASP, PHP) to enhance site capabilities Investigate ways to incorporate other County data (e.g. Planning, Highway, and Recorder of Deeds)