Roadmap for Runtime SDK

[MarcoGregorini]

Good morning. We are currently developing an application for the defense industry using ArcGIS Rntime SDK for Qt 10.2.6. We started using the QML API but soon realized that the C++ API offers much more features than the QML API (for instance, displaying military graphics using message processing or better support for touch interaction, just to name a few). We would like to stick to QtQuick since the Qt community clearly thinks this is the future of the framework, but the limited features of the Runtime Sdk for QML hamper our efforts.

So we would like to know if the next release of the Runtime SDK for Qt will address such discrepancy between QML and C++ and when such release will be available; we found no roadmap stating the future of the Runtime SDK for Qt in your sites (and when public beta will be available for the users) and we think this should be addressed by Esri since your technology is used in critical industry sectors.

Thanks.

[LucasDanzinger · Accepted solution]

The immediate roadmap is that we will soon be releasing a very focused patch release for 10.2.6, with some bug fixes, but no new functionality. What we have been working on for so time now is our Quartz release, and we will have a beta available for you to download near the UC in June. This release will bring many new capabilities, and the discrepancies between the two APIs will be no longer- they will both have the same functionality. The only caveat to that right now is that we do not plan to have local server as part of the QML API. Please let us know if this is something you need. We will continue to have our pure QML API, and our pure C++ (widgets) API, but we will also be releasing a QQuickItem MapView, which will allow you to create your UI in QML, and write all of your business logic in C++. This paradigm will be supported on all platforms. In addition to that, we will have support for web maps, 3D, military symbology, and lots more. You can find some more details about Quartz in the following blog posts

Quartz Beta 1 is Now Available! | ArcGIS Blog

Quartz Architecture Deep Dive | ArcGIS Blog

Let me know if you have any more questions.

-Luke

[MarcoGregorini]

Thanks Luke for the comprehensive answer. Do you think you can predict a date for the availability of the final release? End of 2016, in mid-2017, later? And, finally, I presume that, although as stated in the blog posts the runtime SDK API will undergo some revisions, the features will only be extended; is that correct? Or some features will be removed?

Thanks again!

Marco

[LucasDanzinger]

Marco-

We are aiming for Q3 of 2016 for our final release of Qt. Most everything that was at our 10.2.6 release will be there are in Quartz, plus many more new capabilities. I will say that there are many API changes, so sometimes, a class will be removed or will work completely differently, because the overall workflow has changed. It is also possible that some fringe workflows may not come in until Update 1. If you have any specific bits of functionality you are curious about, let me know, and I will check our plans. I also recommend watching for the beta in June, and downloading it to see if you can do your workflows with it. There will be some new features still added between beta and final, but the bulk of it will be available for you to test.

-Luke

[MarcoGregorini]

Thanks Luke,
you gave us valuable information for the planning of our project. We eagerly await for the release of the beta (by the way, if there was an early adopter program for beta release, we would like to get involved).

You mentioned the QQuickItem MapView; I imagine it's the new version of the current SDK's MapQuickItem. We are experimenting with MapQuickItem in our project in order to overcome the limits of the QML API, but since the MapQuickItem header file is not included in the C++ SDK (we extracted it from the documentation) and there are no related examples, we are wondering if its use is not recommended in the current SDk version. For instance, we found that the MapQuickItem seems not to handle the

navigation on the map using the keyboard (plus, minus, arrow keys). Could you give us some hints about it? Can we expect further problems using the MapQuickItem? (or maybe it's better to open a new discussion).

Thanks again, Marco