2014 Summer Newsletter

PYTHON SCRIPTING – A GREAT TIME-SAVER

As a GIS professional, do you find yourself doing a GIS workflow repeatedly, whether daily, weekly, or monthly? If the answer is yes, you may want to take a serious look at the Python programming language. Python has come bundled with ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop for several releases now for the purpose of automating GIS /geoprocessing workflows. It has long been promoted by ESRI, whose software most property appraiser office mapping/GIS departments use. The Martin County Property Appraiser’s Office has been using Python since 2008. I first heard of it from a colleague at a GIS conference, and became interested when he said that it was easy to learn. I was surprised, because I had never heard of a programming language that was easy to learn, and I had never considered myself a programmer. However, I was still interested

John Watterson, GISP, CFE

and decided to investigate. Initially, I could not find any training material for Python with GIS, but then came upon on a company and website: Geospatial Training Services ( www.geospatialtraining.com ). The website turned out to be quite a find because Geospatial Training Services has a very strong training department. They had a self-paced GIS Python course that was inexpensive (well under $200.00). I decided to give it a try and bought the course. A booklet of course slides was mailed to me, along with a CD containing audible lectures with the same slides in my course book. Also included were course exercise documents with accompanying GIS data. I took the course and my colleague was indeed right, Python is an easy programming language for GIS purposes. The course was clear and interesting, and I couldn’t wait to write my first script. If you are a GIS professional using GIS/geoprocessing tools you should not be intimidated by this language, not at all.

(Continued on page 15)

14

Summer 2014 Newsletter of the FCIAAO