00:01Stephen Ervin from Harvard University.

00:06Let’s see, I wanted to say three things about this talk.

00:11One, I didn't actually bribe the editors to put my talk about object orientation right after Philip...

00:18...talked about objects multiple times.

00:22Two, if most of our talks in the geographic scale are at the 1:25,000 that we’ve been seeing here, and Carl's was out at...

00:31...one to a million or ten million or something, mine is at about 1:10 or 11.

00:37It's a very small topic, really, but I think it's important or I wouldn't be here.

00:44And it came up because I was doodling, as is a habit of mine, and I was doodling words...

00:52And it's just not point, lines, and polygons; that's pretty clear.

00:53...actually, not in PowerPoint but originally.

00:56In case you didn't get it I discovered that they lined up.

01:04And I thought, now, is everybody going to agree with me about that?

01:08I just took it for granted when I wrote this.

01:11But I'm not sure that everybody would agree with me about this and so I thought I would say a few words about it.

01:19In the last 10 years or so, certainly in the last 20 years, anybody who has been programming...

01:24...has been working around computers, has seen the emergence of this thing called "object-oriented" something.

01:30Usually object-oriented programming systems, which has the unfortunate acronym OOPS.

01:37Or, object-oriented databases, which are coupled with them.

01:42And many of the good ideas that have come out of object orientation, object-oriented programming...

01:47...and object-oriented databases, are applicable at higher level, not just for programmers'...

01:54...activities, such as the activities of geodesign.

01:59Hence, I've got one more acronym.

02:02No, wait.

02:03No wait! I've got...

02:05There we go - object-oriented geodesign.

02:11Object-oriented programming says Wiki, "a programmatic paradigm that uses objects," end quotes.

02:17Data structures consisting of data fields and methods.

02:22This may turn out and seem to many a quibble among programmers about something...

02:27...or other and so, and part, it is.

02:30But I'll try and clarify where I think it's not.

02:34Many modern programming languages now support OOP, because there have been some obvious benefits...

02:42...that have accrued to people writing code.

02:46A little bit of history, back in the early days, the prehistoric, preweb days, there was a little language called...

02:54...Small Talk that emerged from some very smart folks.

02:58And they wrote a very interesting little program called Thinglab, both of which you can Google...

03:03...if you're interested in, but not right now.

03:06And, there...it was really great, because in Thinglab, you could actually see things.

03:11There were balls that bounced.

03:14And that was interesting because they were able to encapsulate real physical objects...

03:19...and real physical attributes of these things that were just in code and make them so they could...

03:23...collide and respond to gravity or be elastic, and various other kinds of things.

03:27So that was interesting and cool in the early days of computer graphics.

03:31And it also turned out that there was this idea that, for example, a rubber ball was both an instance of...

03:37...something spherical and an instance of something elastic, and it got some of its properties from...

03:42...being spherical and being a member of the class of all spherical things.

03:46And it got some other properties from being elastic, and a member of the class of all elastic things.

03:51And as a programming convenience, you could write what you knew about elastic things in general...

03:56...and then you say, oh well, you know, rubber balls, a special case that happens to be spherical...

04:00...has some other attributes.

04:02A spring is another kind of elastic thing, because you could reuse all the stuff you knew about elastic things...

04:07...and then specialize what was unique about a spring.

04:10And a rubber band was an example of all things that are rubber and all things that are elastic...

04:14...and all things that are toroidal or cylindrical or something and also had these other attributes.

04:19That turned out to be a very powerful way of thinking about aggregating large, complicated assemblies...

04:25...of knowledge about things like the real world, or very small things like bank accounts and so on.

04:30And so this idea about this kind of programming directly led, quite directly, to Java...

04:36...which is one of the preeminent programming languages in the world out there, and the other two...

04:42...sort of main production languages in the world right now, Objective-C, which much of the Apple industry...

04:48...is built upon, and the dot net/dot com structures that the Microsoft Windows world uses in.

04:54And so this is happening out there.

04:57Indeed, much Esri software is object-oriented.

05:00There are ArcObjects that some of you have heard of references to in the talks to date.

05:07And at the underlying level, the level that programmers and developers who get access to the stuff...

05:13...are using objects and extending them.

05:16That's a great thing.

05:17You can take a standard class and extend it to your unique needs, and you inherit all the good work...

05:23...that was done by people before you plus whatever unique customizations you have to make yourself.

05:28And developers get all kinds of useful predefined objects to work with.

05:33There's the terrain data importer object, and you can say, oh! I'd like one of those in my application...

05:38...and just effectively import it and say “take it”, but in my case, I've got this additional thing that I want to do to it.

05:43And all you have to work on is the additional thing that you want to do, which is efficient...

05:47...and that's great, and it inherits and builds up things that can be traded.

05:52So Esri can hand out these objects to other people to use, refine, and use in different ways.

06:00But, geodesign community, unless they happen to be programmers working on this, don't get the same rich...

06:06...and expressive library of useful objects, which I think we could use.

06:12We mostly get, you know, PGP, and PLP, and many tools for making them look like...

06:20...or represent real-world objects, and we can say, oh, this icon, this double line with black...

06:28...in the middle and gray at the edges represents a road.

06:31And so it's sort of object-like you could just fake yourself into thinking you're working with a road...

06:35...but you're not really; you've just got a line with some attributes on it.

06:44And we don't get the two most valuable things that object-oriented programmers get...

06:48...which is encapsulated attributes and behavior; that is, not just the attributes but also the behavior.

06:53What do roads do - and how do they work - and how do they intersect with other things...

06:56...are all wrapped up in one package that you can hand around.

07:00And, this notion of class and instance inheritance.

07:03Where you can say, my road is a special case of all dirt roads but mine’s got this very special...

07:08...interesting characteristics about it, and build on that.

07:12And all of those things - those two things - have added up to a whole bunch of benefits that...

07:16...programmers enjoy, but most geodesigners don't.

07:22Things like, trees, forests, cars, fire hydrants, watersheds, are indeed objects that we could use.

07:30They come with a whole bunch of useful attributes already built in.

07:33You've got the tools to extend the attributes that you need, and share them in various ways.

07:39And indeed then, models and simulations can be built upon these, and even built into these...

07:46...kinds of objects that can be handed around and shared.

07:50There's an asterisk; that means, something to follow later.

07:54So, we could actually have a library - wouldn't that be great - of the kinds of things that we want to...

08:00...geodesign with, some of which are well known and understood and some of which are absolutely new...

08:05...and to be invented by you in a way that might draw upon some previous class attributes...

08:11...methods, and so on, and handed down, and moved along.

08:15 And there's the asterisk.

08:17It's not easy; that's what I'm saying, if it were easy it would have been done.

08:23There are many problems.

08:25How do you goactually what is the...and I’ll...

08:28...probably should have used the word ontology, but it's been used so many times here...

08:31...at this conference I didn't think I had to.

08:33But what is the ontology? What are the taxonomies?

08:36And how do you choose what are the appropriate top-level classes and instances that you want to use?

08:43There's no probably one right answer, and so what is the taxonomy of taxonomies, and the...

08:47...ontology of ontologies that we're going to have to work with that will be helpful?

08:57And indeed, the object-orientedness is interesting and fascinating, but as I and some others have...

09:02...pointed out for some time...

09:05...in the geoworld we have these things called fields like forests which are more than just the...

09:10...aggregation of the individual object trees, or so on.

09:13And they're not readily modeled in the object-oriented paradigm, which makes it interesting.

09:18It's a challenging, possibly even research-worthy, enterprise to think about.

09:25There are emergent methods.

09:29You search the literature and you'll find object-oriented this and object-oriented that in a wide range of...

09:35...applications that, and this is in the research environment, mostly. Researchers are sometimes a little bit...

09:42...ahead of the development industry.

09:47And, we've heard a couple of times about our friends at CityGML, and CityGML certainly...

09:53...I think right now, is one of the frontrunners in having both a starting set of taxonomy...

10:00...and ontology and sets of words and classes that are already shareable and can be specialized...

10:05...and can move around and be shared.

10:07So this is, I think right now, the best example of how this is working out, where you can add and subtract...

10:14...attributes from classes in ways they can use things.

10:20Is an acorn an object?

10:22Is an ecosystem an object?

10:25What about clouds?

10:27Well, there is no predefined class right now for clouds, but you can represent your clouds as generic city objects.

10:35That's a useful thing.

10:36Or, you could sit down and define the concept of a cloud, and all of the attributes that you want for it...

10:40...and all of the behaviors that you expect out of the cloud, and add it into the library for all to change...

10:45...or you could petition the OGC to add it into the canonical list of things that people might care about.

10:51And that's what the great benefit of object-oriented approaches will be.

10:58And, OOGIS is an old idea.

11:02Our friends Egenhofer and Frank wrote in '92, "The concept of complex objects and...

11:09...pertinent operations are more powerful modeling methods than the currently popular structure...

11:14...of relational tables and relational algebra."

11:16Not to diss relational tables and relational structure that most of us grew up with, with points, lines and...

11:22...polygons as the way to express a coherent world, but at least some smart folks out there have been...

11:29...thinking about alternate ways and costs and benefits of them, and I recommend some of this thinking...

11:35...to you for understanding some of this.

11:38Object-oriented geodesign may well require object-oriented database management systems.

11:44That's part of what they were saying - as opposed to the relational database system that most Esri users...

11:51...and certainly most database users for the last two decades have used.

11:54There's some different paradigms, and indeed, in the world of the web with large, huge cloud-like data...

12:01...you may have, some of you may know that there's a no-SQL database movement...

12:06...trying to understand the needs of the database systems and knowledge representation.

12:11And so you can read all about it at odbms.org.

12:17These kinds of geo-objects that I've just described would naturally reside in the library that I...

12:21...described when I first talked three years ago in Santa Barbara about something...

12:26...the spatial concepts and GIS and design.

12:28Before we had settled on geodesign, I simply said computer-aided geographic design system...

12:34...at the time, and one of the things, including the elements, including the objects and the classes that would...

12:39...be required in this design system that I proposed, was a library where you could store such things...

12:44...and share them and loan them out and a number of other important...

12:49The idea that objects, like elements, can have relationships between them, can be encoded and encapsulated...

12:55...in this paradigm, this way of writing code, and I’m beginning to think about models, and I think that's useful.

13:02And indeed, the diagrams that I talked about last year from this very same podium are all about objects.

13:10We say, oh, there's going to be a park over there, and the concept "park" carries...

13:14...a whole bunch of attributes with it, which I don't want to have to stop and fill out right now...

13:18...I just want to put this placeholder called "park" for the moment.

13:20I may replace it later on and say no, park's no good, what I want is building, parking lot...

13:24...and then from parking lot I want to go oh, you know, the kind that's got trees with pervious soils...

13:28...elaborate these ideas.

13:30So there is a process I think, of going from high-level objects with mostly default attributes to highly...

13:37...specialized objects with very detailed attributes, that is, part of the design part activity of...

13:43...geodesign, which object-orientedness, as a way of thinking, I think, helps.

13:52It's obvious that there are many, many, many use cases and many different kinds of applications of...

13:59...geodesign, and there will be various sorts of objects.

14:03And indeed, object-oriented methodology is not a panacea.

14:07You'll find, if you look in the literature, people will say, oh that stinks, that it takes too long...

14:11...it's got all kinds of problems with it.

14:13But you can find people saying that about anything these days, especially on the web.

14:18They are a proven approach, and I think they're what every geodesigner needs.

14:24Thank you.