The Cook County Department of Office Technology was using a dated version of their Parcel Maintenance application. This application was architected using ActiveX components used in both a Microsoft ASP web application as well as within custom ArcMap controls. In order to take advantage of new ESRI technologies, Cook County would need to migrate their ArcGIS 8.3 enterprise application along with all of the supporting technologies including ArcGIS Desktop, ArcSDE, ArcIMS, Editor Assistant, DB2, SQL Server, custom applications, scripts and 3rd party tools like Crystal Reports.

Cook County was also facing database performance issues related to a very complicated versioning tree model. They required that their Cadastral and Planimetric data be split into separate databases. The County also desired that the version tree be restructured so that each year would no longer be the child version of the previous year. Instead, upon closing a year, that version would be migrated to a separate archive database.

Great Arc replicated the Cook County environment in its office by setting up multiple virtual servers that matched the existing server configurations at Cook County. This method provided Great Arc with an ideal mechanism to quickly backup entire servers in order to repeatedly test software and data upgrades. The replicated machines included clustered DB2 ArcSDE servers, web application and ArcIMS servers, and client machines.

Great Arc first created complete installation documentation to configure the environment to match that at the County. This documentation phase was necessary to capture the original setup along with modifications that had been made over the years. Once this phase of documentation and setup was complete, Great Arc proceeded to upgrade the servers and software to an ArcGIS 9.2 SP3 environment. This included ArcGIS Desktop, ArcSDE, ArcIMS and a clustered DB2 environment. We also migrated all database scripts that were used to replicate data and maintain database performance. New installation and configuration documentation was developed for future environment restores.

In order to better distribute the ArcSDE data, the Planimetric and Cadastral dataset were split into two separate ArcSDE databases. Great Arc worked with the County to establish a new data model for these datasets. We also designed a new Archive database model to store a year’s data version once a year is closed. A new ArcCatalog tool was developed to archive the data.

After the new 9.2 environment was setup up, Great Arc proceeded to migrate the existing source code contained in dozens of separate Visual Studio projects to work with architectural changes made in ArcObjects at version 9. We also made changes to migrate a custom ArcSDE process.

Once the application was migrated and tested, Great Arc proceeded to create a set of test procedures and set up a bug tracking website for internal and County use. We fixed a series of bugs that had existed in the original application. After all bugs were resolved and all testing procedures had passed, Great Arc created a test environment at the County. On set up, the same testing procedures were used to certify the application. After certification, the application was installed in the County’s production environment.

The second phase included enhancements to the Parcel Maintenance application including new features, annotation upgrades, technology assessments, and documentation for migration to the new ESRI topology model in 9.2. As in the first phase, test procedures were created to ensure system stability and any bugs were logged on the bug tracking website.