ArcGIS Service Pack 2 is Out

In the jeesh-another-one-already category, Service Pack 2 for ArcGIS has been released. This includes service packs for all of the usual suspects - ArcGIS Desktop (ArcView, ArcEditor, etc.), ArcIMS, ArcGIS Server (including SDE), ArcGIS Engine, etc. All of the changes in Service Pack 1, which came out a scant three months ago, are included in SP2. Procrastinators rejoice!

Normally I applaud software releases that come early and often. Because of SDE, however, this isn’t one of those cases. The service pack instructions give the usual business about if you patch SDE before your patch all of your various clients your world will likely end. This requires a greater deal of timing and coordination than can really be expected in government, particularly in a situation where the clients are not only in different organizations, but are in entirely different governments. By the time we manage to coordinate all of those parties, we’re usually already running into the next service pack or release. I’m getting a headache just thinking about it.

What I really want to do is get away from SDE being the data transport mechanism for the enterprise. If I can push the data out as WMS and WFS services and just use SDE as a backend for the serious data editors, life would be much simpler (and a heck of a lot cheaper). Hopefully I can squeeze in some work on that in the near future.

To get your ESRI service packs, head here, and best of luck.