Market-leading Geographic Information System company Esri today released the first stable new version of its ArcGIS Editor for Open Street Map since the eyebrow-raising (if still a little green) tool made a splash at launch last July.
Map 2.0 geeks generally consider OpenStreetMap (OSM) one of the coolest things in the geo-world and all things Esri among the least cool. If people working at day jobs in government and industry start making substantial additions to OSM using their existing enterprise-scale tools, though, it could be a winning situation for everyone. The update to version 1.1 brings ArcGIS Editor for OSM out of beta with several bug fixes and improved memory resource utilization.
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OpenStreetMap is community of users who manage an open and freely available database of geographic data. Users can add community data to maps such as bike trails or cell phone towers, the local candy shop or the best place to walk a dog. ArcGIS Editor is the tool that allows users to interact with the data sets and add data community and authoritative data to OSM from inside the widely used ArcGIS enterprise level map editing tool.
ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap 1.1 has been in beta since the end of November, 2010. It
has gone through four different beta iterations with a plethora of fixes added by the community. Fixes include making the geo-processing tools Python scriptable, fixing the application crash for the C++ Attribute Selector tool and applying geometry filter on the Symbolize OSM data model.
Geo community thought leader James Fee called the launch of the tool last year “great news for ArcGIS users and the OpenStreetMap project itself”, saying “hopefully we’ll see some local and state governments start giving back to the OSM project.”
Earlier this month, OpenStreetMap released a much improved 2.0 version of its own on-site map editor, called Potlach. As multiple editing interfaces are improved, the barriers to entry to adding data to the world map should lower and the quality of coverage improve.
The ArcGIS Editor was released under Microsoft Public License (Codeplex) that allows users to access, modify and distribute products of the source code. It is hooked through the OSM API where users can download an area of 0.5 by 0.5 degrees or 50,000 nodes, whichever is reached first.
ArcGIS and the entire suite of Arc-related products is produced by Esri, a software and development company that provides GIS database and software applications located in Redlands, Calif. The Editor program is part of a larger Arc Desktop function that view spatial layered, add functionality and context and manipulate and modify data pertaining to maps.
Esri also provides cloud functionality for ArcGIS and has applications for the iPad and iPhone.
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