What's new in geoprocessing in ArcGIS 10.1 service packs
Service Pack 1
64-bit background processing
You can install theArcGIS 10.1 for Desktop—Background Geoprocessing (64-bit) product which will replace the regular 32-bit background processing that comes standard with ArcGIS 10.1 for Desktop. Using 64-bit processing to perform analysis on systems with large amounts of RAM may help when processing large data which may have otherwise failed in a 32-bit environment. Since all execution is done in the native 64-bit space, more system resources can be used.
Processing time-enabled layers
If the input to a tool is a time-enabled layer, only those features within the specified time period set by the Time Slider window will be processed. With time-enabled layers, you can think of the Time Slider as a way of selecting features for further processing.
New Parallel Processing Factor environment
Tools that honor the Parallel Processing Factor environment will divide and perform the operation across multiple processes.
New and improved tools
The following list highlights new geoprocessing tools or additional parameters that were introduced in ArcGIS 10.1 for Desktop Service Pack 1.
3D Analyst toolbox
A new parameter was added to the following tools in the Visibility toolset.
Tool | Improvement |
|---|---|
Observer Points Viewshed | Added new Above Ground Level (AGL) optional output raster to the Observer Points and Viewshed tools. The AGL result is a raster where each cell value is the minimum height that must be added to an otherwise nonvisible cell to make it visible by at least one observer. |
Data Management toolbox
There are four new tools for generating and managing tile caches. The Tile Cache toolset contains tools for creating, managing, importing, exporting a tile cache, and generating a tile cache tiling scheme. These tools are capable of generating tile caches from a raster dataset or a mosaic dataset locally on your desktop. These tile caches can then be shared as tile packages on ArcGIS Online.
Spatial Analyst toolbox
A new parameter was added to the following tools in the Surface toolset.
Tool | Improvement |
|---|---|
Observer Points Viewshed | Added new Above Ground Level (AGL) optional output raster to the Observer Points and Viewshed tools. The AGL result is a raster where each cell value is the minimum height that must be added to an otherwise nonvisible cell to make it visible by at least one observer. |
Geoprocessing services
In the Service Editor for geoprocessing services, the Capabilities panel contains the Operations allowed: Uploads check box. In Service Pack 1, this is unchecked by default because allowing uploads to your service could possibly pose a security risk.
You can make more than just map services from scratch in Python: CreateGPSDDraft and CreateImageServiceSDDraft for creating Service Definitions from geoprocessing tools and raster data.
There are four new ArcPy functions for managing data stores:
ArcPy
- In the arcpy.da module, Walk can also be used to iterate through a directory tree but can also look into databases and identify ArcGIS data types.
- You can make more than just map services from scratch in Python: CreateGPSDDraft and CreateImageSDDraft for creating Service Definitions from geoprocessing tools and raster data.
- Full support for Esri JSON for geometries, feature sets, and record sets (makes consuming REST from Python easier):
-
- The AsShape function now accepts Esri JSON in addition to GeoJSON format.
- JSON property on geometry, FeatureSet and RecordSet objects that provide a JSON string compatible with the ArcGIS REST API.
- SearchCursor, InsertCursor, and UpdateCursor now accept a SHAPE@JSON token.
- arcpy.da cursors can now access and create geometry with well-known text (WKT) and well-known binary (WKB) formats using SHAPE@WKB and SHAPE@WKT tokens.