Summer 2014 Newsletter of the FCIAAO
14
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
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
.
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)
John Watterson, GISP,
CFE
