ArcStorm Overview

ArcStorm Overview

What is ArcStorm
What's in CAGIS ArcStorm Database
How to access ArcStorm Data in Arc/Info
How to access ArcStorm data in ArcView

ArcStorm (Arc Storage Manager) is ESRI’s implementation of Client/Server technology for managing distributed ARC/INFO databases. ArcStorm enables multiple users to edit the same layer concurrently and uses a feature-level transaction locking mechanism to manage the editing sessions. Traditional techniques of preventing simultaneous editing of the same area, such as the one deployed by the Librarian product from ESRI and Infomaster from SYNERCOM, allow graphic editing by locking the entire tile or facet, even though only one or few features are to be edited. Editing in ArcStorm is not restricted by tile boundary, data locking applies only to the features selected and features that are topologically related to the selected feature set.

An ArcStorm database is made of libraries, which in turn are comprised of graphic layers and attribute tables. One database can contain many libraries and one library can have many layers and tables.

What's in the CAGIS ArcStorm Database

Since June, 1996, the original structure of the CAGIS ArcStorm database has been modified to accommodate both ArcView and ARC/INFO users. The intention is to adopt standards for both layer naming and data structures so that CAGIS users can switch from on-line CAGIS databases to locally stored CAGIS databases easily. The new structure currently consists of three databases, in addition to the Hillside database which is not effected by this restructuring process.

Accessing ArcStorm in ARC/INFO

Accessing ArcStorm in ARC/INFO is as simple as following certain syntax. One of the advantages of using ArcStorm is that the user does not have to remember the location where the coverages actually reside, by placing a dot (.) in front of the layer name such as .sidewalk, the ArcStorm software will located the data for you. For read access to the ArcStorm database in ARC/INFO, for tasks such as plotting, the minimum requirement is networking and the NFS (Network File System) services of your system. For editing and copying data, your machine has to be either a host machine (a Unix workstation) or a X terminal attached to a host machine. Contact your system administrator for such needs .

The following is a simple example for accessing ArcStorm in arcplot:

Arcplot: library hamilton.county
Arcplot: mape .civilbnd
Arcplot: arclines .civilbnd 2

Accessing ArcStorm in ArcView

Accessing ArcStorm data in ArcView includes two methods: 1) have all the data copied onto the PC with ArcView installed, and 2) have your PC networked to a host machine which allows the PC to mount its drives using NFS (Network File System) services. Both of these methods require you to set an environment variable ARCHOME pointing to where your ArcStorm data directory is located. For data mounted from a remote host, ARCHOME should be set to /arcinfo_installation_directory/arcexe70 and be sure to mount the drive as well. For the local data method, make sure that the following steps are followed.

1. Create a directory under the WIN32APP directory on your PC and copy the /arcinfo_installation_directory/arcexe70/arcstorm and the /arcinfo_installation_directory/arcexe70/tables to this directory.

1. Edit the ASCII database files under the ArcStorm directory so that it points to the appropriate location. For example, if your cagis database is under C:\CAGIS, modify the location line in the c:\win32app\arcstorm\cagis:

location c:\cagis