Maybe you used to be able to open up Excel files in ArcCatalog and ArcMap, or maybe your new install will not open them.  You get this great message when you try to open Excel files:

Failed to connect to database. An underlying database error occurred. Class not registered

This happens when your IT group moves you to Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud, or you never had Microsoft Office on your computer.  ArcCatalog and ArcMap depend on certain Microsoft Office system drivers to be installed on your computer which allows you to open Excel files in your GIS.  Sure would be nice if the error message would tell you that!

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If you use QGIS version 3, you have the ability to add Google Maps layers to your map.  The Google Maps layers are really Tile Map Services (TMS).  The following is an example showing how to add Google Maps to QGIS.

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Welcome back!  Last time in Part 2 we configured PostgresSQL on a Linux server.  Now it is finally time to create an Enterprise Geodatabase in PostgreSQL.

Keycodes File

You now need to find your keycodes file.  This file was created when ArcGIS Server was installed on one of your servers.  This file is written to \Program Files\ESRI\License<release#>\sysgen folder on Windows servers and /arcgis/server/framework/runtime/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/ESRI/License<release#>/sysgen on Linux. Copy the keycodes file to a computer that you run ArcGIS Desktop on.  You will need access to it when creating the Enterprise Geodatabase.  Continue reading →

Welcome back!  Last time in Part 1 we installed PostgresSQL on a Linux server.  Now we need to do a few things to get it ready so we can create an Enterprise Geodatabase in it.

Postgres User

When PostgreSQL was installed, a postgres user was created.  The postgres user is the default “superuser” to the PostgreSQL database.  Right now the postgres user password is unknown to you.  You must change it in Linux and in the PostgreSQL database.

Log back in to the Linux server and at the Linux prompt, use the passwd command to change the postgres user password.  You might need to use the sudo command with it for it to work.  Continue reading →

Goodbye Oracle, hello PostgreSQL!  I’ve decided to get out of the Oracle business and move our Enterprise Geodatabase to PostgreSQL.  I’m tired of giving Oracle lots of money each year.  PostgreSQL is open source and it is very mature.  Though we do not have a dedicated DBA here that knows PostgreSQL, they can learn!  And so can I.  Besides, ESRI supports it and if something goes wrong, I can get them on the red hotline phone!

Over the past few years, I have been testing PostgreSQL on Windows by installing it with our ArcGIS Server installations and using it to store GIS data used in our map and feature services.  I have had only one issue and it was a speed problem when selecting over 10,000 polygons in ArcMap.  ESRI confirmed it was a bug.  I believe that problem has gone away, so now is a good time to move to PostgreSQL.  But just to be sure, we will be running both Oracle and PostgreSQL in parallel for a few months.

NOTE: To be able to install an Enterprise Geodatabase in PostgreSQL, you must be running ArcGIS Server (enterprise addition) somewhere.  You need the keycodes file that was created with it to authorize the geodatabase.  You will also need the st_geometry.so file that was created when you installed ArcGIS Desktop 10.6.  More on that later.  Continue reading →

Have you tried to open a Microsoft Excel file in ArcMap and get the following error?

Error: Failed to connect to database. An underlying database error occurred. Class not registered.

I used to be able to open Excel files and now it stopped working.  What happened?  Well … our computers were recently upgraded to Microsoft Office 365 and when that happened it removed an important driver that ArcMap uses to open Excel files.

What to do?  Head on over to this ESRI Technical Support article and install the Microsoft Office system driver.  Don’t worry if you were using a version of Office other than 2007, the driver will work for you.  It fixed my problem!