Hi Kerry,

 

Thanks for your interest in MGET and for exposing your students to it. We’re glad you’re finding it useful.

 

We did test the HDF tool on ArcGIS 10 and it worked. I think I see the problem with your scenario, and it is a bug in MGET that will affect all versions of ArcGIS.

 

The problem relates to how MGET decides where to store temporary files. By default, the current version of MGET will store most temporary files in C:\Temp\GeoEcoTemp_xyz where xyz is your Windows user name. This deviates from Microsoft’s recommendation, which is to store temporary files in the directory specified by the TEMP environment variable, usually in the user’s profile directory, e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\xyz\Local Settings\Temp. We made this decision in the early days of MGET when we discovered that some Spatial Analyst tools in ArcGIS 9.1 would not work right if the output was to a subdirectory of the TEMP directory.

 

The problem with the default, aside from its non-traditional location, is that some users have small C: partitions. We anticipated that these users would not want to store files there so we tried to provide them with an appropriate ArcGIS-friendly alternative: the ArcGIS “Scratch Workspace”. If the Scratch Workspace is set, and it is a file system directory, it will be used instead. This is where the bug comes in.

 

The code that decides whether the Scratch Workspace should be used only checks whether it is a file system directory. It does NOT check whether that directory happens to be an ArcGIS file geodatabase. In your scenario, it appears you set the scratch workspace to the file geodatabase C:\GIS\Data\Temp\Temporary.gdb. Is that correct? The result is that MGET creates a temporary ASCII grid in the file geodatabase (bad!!) and then calls the ASCII To Raster tool to convert it to a binary grid, again in the file geodatabase. ArcGIS refuses to complete that step, apparently because it cannot read the ASCII grid out of the geodatabase’s internal file structure.

 

The workaround is to not set Scratch Workspace to a file geodatabase. Could you give that try and see if the tool works?

 

ESRI invented file geodatabases after the first versions of MGET were released. I haven’t touched the temp directory code since that time, and it did not strike me that someone could choose a file geodatabase as the Scratch Workspace and that this would break the temp dir code. Nonetheless, we should support that scenario. I will fix this in the next release of MGET. The solution will be to revert to using C:\Temp\GeoEcoTemp_xyz if the Scratch Workspace is a file geodatabase.

 

At some future point, possibly later this year, I will probably change MGET to use the TEMP environment variable again rather than C:\Temp\GeoEcoTemp_xyz. Recent versions of ArcGIS do not appear to be affected by the problems with 9.1 and it appears that very few MGET users are still using 9.1.

 

Best,

 

Jason

 

 

Hello,

 

First of all, thank you very much for your hard work regarding the Marine Geospatial Ecology Toolset.  These tools have made my life easier and more productive, I cannot thank you enough.  In addition, I teach a Marine GIS course at Boston Unviversity, where we use these tools extensively.

 

I have recently upgraded to ArcGIS 10, unfortunately, I am unable to run the Convert SDS in HDF to Raster tool.  I have had success running this tool in the past in ArcGIS 9x versions.  I am able to extract the headers from the hdf file, this is usually my check to make sure the toolset was installed correctly.  However, I am not able to run HDF to Raster tool.  The error is below.

 

Any guidance would be most appreciative.

 

Thanks again for such an amazing toolset.

 

Cheers,

 

Kerry

 

 

Executing: HDFSDSToArcGISRaster Y:\GIS\Projects\Brooke\From_Brooke\SST_for_Goose\A20100012010365.L3m_YR_SST4_4.bz2 Y:\GIS\Projects\Brooke\From_Brooke\SST_for_Goose\SST_4Goose2 l3m_data -180 -90 4.16666666666667E-02 65535 false false false false # # # # # # # # false

Start Time: Tue Aug 31 13:46:22 2010

Running script HDFSDSToArcGISRaster...

Converting SDS "l3m_data" in HDF file Y:\GIS\Projects\Brooke\From_Brooke\SST_for_Goose\A20100012010365.L3m_YR_SST4_4.bz2 to ArcGIS raster Y:\GIS\Projects\Brooke\From_Brooke\SST_for_Goose\SST_4Goose2...

Failed to execute. Parameters are not valid.

ERROR 000885: Input ASCII raster file: C:\GIS\Data\Temp\Temporary.gdb\GeoEcoTemp\tmpmg8cs3\temp.txt's does not have a file extension.

Failed to execute (ASCIIToRaster).

ArcGISError: The ArcGIS ASCIIToRaster_Conversion geoprocessing tool failed when given the parameters (*args=('C:\\GIS\\Data\\Temp\\Temporary.gdb\\GeoEcoTemp\\tmpmg8cs3\\temp.txt', 'C:\\GIS\\Data\\Temp\\Temporary.gdb\\GeoEcoTemp\\tmpmg8cs3\\output', 'INTEGER')) and reported ExecuteError: Failed to execute. Parameters are not valid.

ERROR 000885: Input ASCII raster file: C:\GIS\Data\Temp\Temporary.gdb\GeoEcoTemp\tmpmg8cs3\temp.txt's does not have a file extension.

Failed to execute (ASCIIToRaster).

The following consequences resulted from the original error:

Could not convert SDS "l3m_data" in HDF file Y:\GIS\Projects\Brooke\From_Brooke\SST_for_Goose\A20100012010365.L3m_YR_SST4_4.bz2 to ArcGIS raster Y:\GIS\Projects\Brooke\From_Brooke\SST_for_Goose\SST_4Goose2

<class 'GeoEco.ArcGIS.ArcGISError'>: The ArcGIS ASCIIToRaster_Conversion geoprocessing tool failed when given the parameters (*args=('C:\\GIS\\Data\\Temp\\Temporary.gdb\\GeoEcoTemp\\tmpmg8cs3\\temp.txt', 'C:\\GIS\\Data\\Temp\\Temporary.gdb\\GeoEcoTemp\\tmpmg8cs3\\output', 'INTEGER')) and reported ExecuteError: Failed to execute. Parameters are not valid.

ERROR 000885: Input ASCII raster file: C:\GIS\Data\Temp\Temporary.gdb\GeoEcoTemp\tmpmg8cs3\temp.txt's does not have a file extension.

Failed to execute (ASCIIToRaster).

 

Failed to execute (HDFSDSToArcGISRaster).

Failed at Tue Aug 31 13:47:00 2010 (Elapsed Time: 38.00 seconds)

 

Kerry Lagueux
Associate Scientist / GIS Specialist
New England Aquarium
Central Wharf / Boston, MA 02110
tel:  617-226-2194
/ www.marinegis.org