Is there a PluginWorkspaceFactory for SqlServer 2008?
With SQL Server 2008 supporting spatial types, it seems natural to write Plugin Workspace for it. Why hasn’t this been done? ArcGIS Server (Basic) 9.3 is required if you want to use Sql Server 2008.
Seems like it wouldn’t be hard to write a PluginWorkspace. Intead of storing coordinates in a file, as the SimplePoint example does, it would store a connection string along with a table name or sql expression.
This plugin would allow ArcView 9.2 to view SqlServer 2008 without ArcGIS Server.
For editing, a command could be written that creates a local scratch copy for editing. Then after edits, another command could insert/update/delete based on changes.
Now if only ESRI would provide an alternative to the required COMException in IPlugInCursorHelper.NextRecord() …
The Memory Leak 
According to their press releases, ZigGIS 2 (free for personal, ~$280 a seat corporate) supports SQL Server 2008 as well as PostGIS.
It can’t be that hard to modify the old GPL’ed ZigGIS 1.x to get SQL Server 2008 working.
Although now that I check, they don’t seem to have done this… I’m going to try to contact Abe and see if there was a reason why they didn’t implement it.
Hi Bill –
It certainly looks technically feasible to abstract Ziggis to support SqlServer2008 as well as PostGis. The problem I see is cultural … will devoted ZigGis developers be willing to provide an arena where Microsoft can compete with PostGIS?
PluginWorkspaceFactories are not supported by out of the box arcmap editing tools. i.e. they are read only datasources. ZigGis would be a logical tool for editing SqlServer08. I’m not aware of any SqlSvr08 spatial editing toolsets out there, certainly there must be some.
Kirk
Well, here’s what Abe from ZigGIS told me:
“Yes, this {SQL Server 2008 support} is still in the works but will not be available until version 2.1. We plan to publish our roadmap soon but I can tell you that the feature is planned for Q2 2009. All current 2.0.x customers will be upgraded to 2.1 free of charge.”