5 replies to this topic

[Sab]

Some interesting results from QGIS and ArcGIS performance in clipping vectors:
http://donmeltz.com/...isqgis-faceoff/

In Summary:
Clipping a 1.3 GB file

ArcGIS 10, SP1

Window 7 64 bit
Dell Precision m2400 laptop
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 3.06GHz
8 GB RAM


QGIS 1.4.0

Ubuntu 11.4
Dell Inspiron 600m laptop
Intel Pentium M CPU, 1.60 Ghz
1GB RAM


ARC:
Over 12 hours

QGIS:
17 min 21 second

[Claude]

You need to upgrade to ArcInfo for it to work in an hour or less

[Clark Geomatics]

Throw money at the problem and it goes away? Seriously?

I've experienced what Sab describes in his posting of ESRI's (legacy-constrained) products failing to process (usually some form of intersection/union operation) complex data sets - the fact that Sab has to wait 12 hours for the process in ArcGIS to end in failure is unacceptable, especially in light of the fact open source and even low-cost commercial products can successfully complete the process in a fraction of the time. The "upgrade and you'll be fine" sell is, unfortunately, the ESRI motto.

I often don't even bother using ESRI's tools to process large data sets because I've been stung too many times with failed processes that are a waste of my (and my client's) time.

Sab's link back to the original post highlights some interesting comparisons.

[Matthew Hampton]

That's impressive, however like Claude mentioned, upgrading to SP2 will considerably help ArcGIS.

Needless to say, if all you need is very rudimentary geoprocessing - QGIS is a great tool. I wonder how this will affect the pricing of ArcGIS Basic?

[redbeard]

That's impressive, however like Claude mentioned, upgrading to SP2 will considerably help ArcGIS.

Needless to say, if all you need is very rudimentary geoprocessing - QGIS is a great tool. I wonder how this will affect the pricing of ArcGIS Basic?

I tried it with SP2 and couldnt get it to finish. Still getting the error that the others reported. I wonder if anyone tried this with PostGIS.

[Sab]

Throw money at the problem and it goes away? Seriously?

I've experienced what Sab describes in his posting of ESRI's (legacy-constrained) products failing to process (usually some form of intersection/union operation) complex data sets - the fact that Sab has to wait 12 hours for the process in ArcGIS to end in failure is unacceptable, especially in light of the fact open source and even low-cost commercial products can successfully complete the process in a fraction of the time. The "upgrade and you'll be fine" sell is, unfortunately, the ESRI motto.

I often don't even bother using ESRI's tools to process large data sets because I've been stung too many times with failed processes that are a waste of my (and my client's) time.

Sab's link back to the original post highlights some interesting comparisons.

Jeff
That was a link I came across on QGIS mailing list and thought to share it with you here in Cartotalk. I don't even own an ESRI product to be able to do any benchmarking! But heard people complaining a lot about some of the basic GIS tasks which takes forever in Arc.