DevSummit 2014: Exploring Crash Courses

Most people go to the DevSummit to catch up with the latest and new technology, or get a chance to meet other developers building ArcGIS. However, the DevSummit is also a great chance to get started learning about new and existing technology, especially this year. I don’t mean only by attending the pre-summit, hands-on training workshops I mentioned in my last post, but the regular sessions too. In this post, I will run through some of these sessions.

If you’re a developer and you want to become a GIS developer, this year you can take a crash course called Introduction to GIS for Developers to help get you there. Here's how. On Monday at 8:30 a.m. you'll start with GIS fundamentals with a brief discussion on basic GIS data types and cartographic principles. At 10:30 a.m., you'll move into the second session: GIS Data, including attributes and geometry of vector data, geodatabases, subtypes, topology and advanced functionality like versioning and replication. Returning to the same room after lunch for GIS Functionality at 1 p.m., you'll cover 2D and 3D mapping, image processing and geoprocessing. This track ends with GIS Sharing at 3 p.m., which will put together everything you learned into one coherent story along with ArcGIS Server, ArcGIS Online, Amazon's cloud-based system and Esri’s Web APIs.

If you already know this much about GIS but would like a more in-depth understanding of geodata access, there’s a session on Monday at 8:30 a.m. to cover geodatabase API when accessing, querying, editing and loading data.

Usually, you’ll use ArcGIS Server to access data through enterprise geodatabases. However, you can also enable ArcGIS Server to directly connect to your database engine and use native spatial types. This is an option that's becoming more popular, especially if your organization is already using a database engine for their application. Learn more about how to web-enable your databases with ArcGIS Server on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m.

But as a developer, I'm sure you’re mostly attending for greater insight on the development technology. You can get a one-hour crash course with all the existing APIs at DevSummit including:

• ArcGIS Runtime (Monday 8:30 a.m.): this covers all the Runtime SDKs and gives a high-level overview of the platform, architecture and advantages of using any of the SDKs.
• ArcGIS Runtime for Java SE (Monday 11 a.m.): quickly and easily build desktop applications using Java SE. You’ll learn about common workflows, good design patterns for mobile devices and how to boost performance.
• The ArcGIS Runtime for .NET (Monday 3:30 a.m.) will cover building .NET applications for Windows Desktop, Windows Store and Windows Phone. These are three APIs with common design and structure that allow you to target all three devices with one application (with minor tweaks).
• With the growing use of mobile technology, Runtime for iOS and OSX (Monday 11 a.m.) and Runtime for Android (Monday 1 p.m.) are almost must-attend for everyone. These two sessions will cover building mapping applications and best practices for each platform.
• ArcGIS API for JavaScript: This session is expected to be popular. It actually has offerings on Monday at 9:45 a.m. and Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.
• Same for the Developing Apps for ArcGIS Marketplace, which runs on Monday at 11 a.m. and Wednesday on 4 p.m. This session will cover how to leverage OAuth2 when connecting to ArcGIS Online, how to add analytics to your application and integrating ArcGIS Marketplace subscription management into existing business systems.
• Maybe you feel like jumping ahead and using Marketplace is a big step? It won’t be if you attend Getting Started with ArcGIS Online on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. In this session, you will get an overview of the ArcGIS Online platform, including ready-to-use maps and apps, analytics, access to Marketplace, plug-ins for business systems and tools for developers.

Looking ahead, you can also get started with an upcoming technology: the GeoEvent Processor.  This extension for ArcGIS Server enables you to connect to streaming and real-time data. This session (on Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Wednesday 10:30 a.m.) will cover an overview of how to connect streams of data to your ArcGIS Server and how to make it work seamlessly with other ArcGIS products and APIs.

The announcement and release of ArcGIS WebApp Builder is expected at this year's DevSummit. This application builder for JavaScript API is much like the application builder for Silverlight Viewer and Flex Viewer. Offered Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Thursday at 1 p.m., the Introduction to the ArcGIS WebApp Builder session will be hard to miss.

You can take it a step further and learn all about Customizing and Extending the ArcGIS WebApp Builder on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. and Thursday at 2:30 p.m. You can build custom widgets, and completely customize the look and feel of the app by developing your own styles and layouts.

We’re just getting started. More in-depth sessions in upcoming posts.

Read the next post in this series: DevSummit 2014: DevSummit.js.