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upper case, beginning with lower case. The acronym for the variable is at the<br />
beginning of the name, while the descriptive part follows, beginning with an upper<br />
case (Eg. htElev). In addition to modules such as math and string Python also has<br />
several geoprocessing modules. One of these, arcgisscripting, accesses all the arc<br />
toolbox tools. It should be noted that the geoprocessing object that might be being<br />
called is accessed differently, depending on the version of arcGis being used.<br />
Another package called gdal (which accesses the spatial data abstraction library<br />
being utilized in this thesis) allows for the manipulation of this library. In this<br />
Python module the language connects to the original gdal programming language<br />
(usually C or an object oriented variation) using a SWIG interface compiler. An<br />
example of Python in use in GID can be its application alongside ArcGis; ArcGis<br />
was built using hundreds of arc objects such as “featureClass”, “symbol”, “field”<br />
etc., each of which has properties and methods accessed by Python using dot<br />
notation. An example of this notation is the assignment of a variable name tr =<br />
arcGisScripting.create().<br />
Another possible method for implementing the process suggested in this study is<br />
through the .NET platform. In particular VB.NET provides a programming<br />
language that can be utilized to access GeoMedia software –which is a .NET<br />
oriented group of geographic software packages provided by Intergraph. This<br />
software allows the user to interact with ESRI shapefiles and also with spatial<br />
databases created using Oracle Spatial. It also allows for developed tools to tie in<br />
with graphical editing platforms such as Autocad and Microstation which would<br />
allow for interpretation of both images and associated geospatial data. This would<br />
also mean (given appropriate licence) that the developer could access specific<br />
ancillary products for database management (for databases based in Oracle) and<br />
others ranging from map production to 3D modeling. This programming language<br />
(VB.NET) was not used in this thesis because of the potential licencing issues<br />
which may have been involved.<br />
This thesis suggests procedures which lend themselves to C as they involve<br />
repeated loops of steps, from the pixel analysis to the classification of the<br />
polygons identified by the user through the region of interest. These procedures<br />
involve processor heavy analysis and lend themselves to being developed in C. In<br />
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