MI Pro 9 release notes - ominous reading

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Mats Elfström

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Jul 27, 2007, 6:15:31 AM7/27/07
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Hi All!

Looking forward to the delivery of version 9, I decided to look at the
available documentation.
After having read the release notes, I think I will wait for the first
service pack which ought to come pretty soon.
Im my view, the reported known problems of version 9 fall into three categories.

1 Licensing and installation problems.
It seems that PB Mapinfo have adapted a new licensing scheme, and that
this causes a number of problems. This is counter-productive and
user-unfriendly, and uncalled for.
However, concurrent licensing seemed interesting. But note that the
cost for _one_ concurrent license equals _four_ standalone licenses.

2 Windows Vista problems.
Some installation problems seems Vista-related but there are also
other Vista-related issues. Surely Windows Vista was available during
the beta phase of MI Pro 9, so that these bugs could have been ironed
out?

3 Universal Translator problems
Again, these problems seems to be related to Safe Software using
outdated MI libraries for the MapInfo flavor of FME. PB Mapinfo and
Safe Software needs to get together on this, so that their software is
synchronized. I do not know how the GUI for UT looks in v9 but hope
for a more modern interface than in 8.5 and older versions. It is
still like Windows 3.1 or thereabouts.

I have of course downloaded MB 9 (sour - I bought MB 8.5 less than a
year ago and paid full price) but will postpone use of it until the
compatibility issues are cleared.
Then I went to look for Proviewer 9, which appears to be up for
download on the MI homepage. But that is bogus, what you get is
Proviewer 8.5.
Funny thing though, it says that MapInfo Professional v9.0 is a
requirement for downloading PV 9. As I don't have that, maybe that is
why I get PV 8.5 instead ( I have MI Pro 8.5).

How about you early adopters who run MI Pro 9 already - is the above
of minor consequence, or sufficient reason for postponing an upgrade?

Regards, Mats.E

robert crossley

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Jul 27, 2007, 6:22:04 AM7/27/07
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Hi all,
Here is a hypothetical question that isn’t so hypothetical anymore.
I have a set of products that have been developed in mapbasic and evolved
over the last 10 years. There is a massive amount of code (900K mbx) and
the products are pretty well accepted for what they do in their niche
market.
The products are about editing data, maintaining textural data associated
with the spatial data, visualising trends and making changes to the textural
data based on trends. But lets face, MapBasic sucks at complex dialogs and
forms.
Recently I had some help developing a VB shell that wraps that code and uses
a subset of it to produce a more textural orientated product for an
associated group. We used VB/ integrated mapping as that was what we were
comfortable with at the time. It works well, but I have an issue that it is
held together by glue and sticky tape, and an error raised in the MapBasic
code will break it.
I now have a few programmers to back me up. They are mainly Java skilled
and web skilled (particularly in MapServer). We also have some .NET skills.

We are being asked to expand the functionality of what we do considerably,
and increasing will require better form handling.
I was hanging my hat on a .NET version of MapInfo Pro. For the last 5 years
I have been telling them I will move when MIPro goes to .NET
The question is, If someone was going pay to redevelop the whole suite of
products, what would we do it in?
Java/ MapX?
Java Client/ MapExtreme (but they want to be able to work unconnected
sometimes)
MapGuide?
UDig?

Comments welcome please?
-------------------------------------------
Robert Crossley
Agtrix P/L Australia

Far Southern Queensland Office:
Unit 6, 2 Bonanza Drive
Billinudgel NSW 2483
AUSTRALIA
Postal:
PO Box 63
New Brighton 2483

P: 61 2 6680 1309
F: 61 2 6680 5214
E: rob...@agtrix.com
W: www.agtrix.com

Brisbane Office:
109 Milsom St
Cooparoo 4151
Queensland
P: 61 7 3843 3363


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Sheila Quan

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Jul 27, 2007, 7:28:25 AM7/27/07
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Hi Mats
 
Not leaping to MapInfo's defence but their new licensing scheme brings them into line with other GIS platforms, namely ESRI's ArcGIS.  Also I understood that the price comparison is 1 server-based license to 3 standalone licences.  Maybe the discrepancy is dependent on which country your copies of MIPro are licenced to?
 
HTH
 
Sheila
 

Flavio Hendry

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Jul 27, 2007, 7:37:36 AM7/27/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com, Mats Elfström
Hi Mats

I installed 9.0 on Win XP and had no problems so far.

Licensing worked without problems. Most vendors do licensing like that
today. Let us see how it is handled, in any case as license is per user,
one should be allowed to license it on several machines (such as on the
desktop and on the laptop).

UT: The "UT" now is built in partly as UT as it was and partly as File /
Open Universal Data (where you get the usual FME GUI). If you have FME
installed, you can use any of the formats (so I could i.e. open a
PostGIS layer, read only of course). FME supports two kind of MapInfo
TAB, one based on MiTAB (Open Source) and one based on MFAL (MapInfo
File Access Library). I do not see problems with either.

Vista: I had Vista installed on a machine, however I had many problems
with all kind of software so that I went back to XP ... Better to wait
for SP1 of Vista ...

Mit freundlichem Gruss / Best Regards
Flavio Hendry

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Sue Beetlestone

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Jul 27, 2007, 7:57:21 AM7/27/07
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Hello All

My chief concerns are about Mats' first point (We seldom use the Universal
Translator, Vista seems unlikely to happen for us and we seem to have had
MapBasic since the year dot).

On concurrency - we have over 300 licences and it is quite common for up to
half of them to be in use at the same time so it seems to me that we are
unlikely to want to go down that route at present.

It was only yesterday that (having been on leave) I got round to installing
Version 9. I am wondering whether we may have difficulty in the future when
we install and try to activate a licence which is a reinstallation on a
rebuilt PC - or where the user has a new PC and the old one has been removed
before we have chance to uninstall. It may appear to PB MapInfo that we are
installing a greater number of licences than we actually hold!

Sue
Susan D Beetlestone
Uwch Swyddog GIS Corfforaethol ac ALO/Senior Corporate GIS Officer & ALO
Cyngor Sir Powys/Powys County Council
Uned Ymchwil a Gwybodaeth/Research & Information Unit
Swyddfeydd Sant Ioan/St John's Offices
Llandrindod Wells
Powys
LD1 5ES

Tel 01597 827592

e-mail sus...@powys.gov.uk

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James Stott

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Jul 27, 2007, 9:05:18 AM7/27/07
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Sue,
 
According to the manual, if you need to transfer MapInfo (because you rebuild or get a new machine) you should 'transfer' your license to MapInfo before you remove the software. This then puts the license back on MapInfos license server and you can then use that license again on the new machine.
 
The one thing from the manual that I have a query about is that it states:
 
"Your organization is limited to two license transfers per year, regardless of the number of licenses"
 
Does this mean you can only do this process twice no matter how many licenses you have?
 
James

 

Sue Beetlestone

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Jul 27, 2007, 9:17:29 AM7/27/07
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Hello James
 
Yes - I read that too - but unfortunately because our users are scattered around a large area we seldom get the chance to do the transfer as the users PC has often disappeared long before we are asked to re-install. Our IT people clean up the old PCs.
 
The bit about 2 licence transfers a year puzzles me too.
 
Sue

Tim Rideout

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Jul 27, 2007, 9:41:16 AM7/27/07
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Dear All,

 

I believe this has been clarified by MapInfo already as follows:

 

MapInfo will not unreasonably refuse a request to transfer a license to another PC, despite what it might say about 2 changes only. This may or may not mean a call as opposed to just connecting to the server as it is not clear if their system is set up to block any more than two requests.

 

The purpose of limiting it a little is that if you could transfer without any limit why buy one of the new floating licenses for three times the price.

 

If you have a laptop and a PC then you can install MapInfo twice on the basis that you are only going to be using one at any one time and thus technically still a single user.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Tim

 

Dr Tim Rideout

Director

 

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Visit XYZ at InterGeo Leipzig Sept 2007 and Frankfurt Book Fair Oct 10-14th 2007

The XYZ Digital Map Company

Unit 9 Phase 2 Hardengreen Business Park

Dalhousie Road, Dalkeith

EH22 3NX, Scotland, Europe

 

Tel: +44 131 454 0426

Fax: +44 131 454 0443

Mobile: +44 7766 825937

Email: tim.r...@xyzmaps.com

Web: www.xyzmaps.com



<BR

o...@nc.rr.com

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Jul 27, 2007, 9:42:36 AM7/27/07
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The only issue we have had so far with 9.0 is the change from date to date/time in the file structure.  It is more problematic when using linked DBMS tables it appears.

The issue arises primarily when refreshing a linked DBMS table such as a spatialware or standard sql point file. The version stamp on the tab file changes to 900.  Older versions of MI Pro or Proviewer cannot access the tab files afterwards. 

We have used a few workarounds in mapbasic scripts that modify the field to date and version to 300 upon committing.

Licensing was not really a problem on our installs.

Hope this helps someone.

Mike Osbourn

Mats Elfström

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Jul 27, 2007, 10:58:41 AM7/27/07
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Hi All!

What a nice debate. Let me add a few notes:

* Cost of concurrent licenses v single use
CMC International advertised these prices on this list june 18
MapInfo Professional 9.0 Single User $1,098.00
MapInfo Professional 9.0 Concurrent User $3,999.00

which is 3.64 times the price and closer to four times than to three.
OK so I rounded the estimate upwards perhaps too much. But on those figures.
I haven't seen any other price lists.

* Licensing policies.
I think t's a question of attitude, from the software vendor to their customers.
Bentley Systems who make MicroStation have recently introduced a
system they call trust licensing. I quote from a white paper on the
subject:
"Bentley, like most software vendors, is serious about improving the
process of protecting
against the loss of its own intellectual property. Just as
importantly, though, Bentley is
serious about protecting against the loss of its own users' ability
and right to access their
own intellectual property: their design data /.../ Bentley's focus for
license management with SELECT Server XM Edition is liberation rather
than restriction."

In short, this means that the license server always issues a license,
even if the usage temporarlily exceeds the number of owned licenses.
This enables the users to always have access to critical software on a
trust basis.
Just as we trust MapInfo by buying their software, they should trust
our use of it.

And it seems correct that the licensing problems depend more on
Windows Vista than on MapInfo, but it is MapInfos responsibility to
ensure that their software works on all certified platforms (or
perhaps version 9 isn't Vista certified?)

* UT woes
I should have been more specific: the worst problem still persists,
that swedish indexed tab files cannot be translated. But it has been
claimed that the MITAB libraries do work better. Maybe we should ask
Safe Software to compile a UT version on those libraries for us
swedes?

Have a nice weekend, all

Mats.E

2007/7/27, o...@nc.rr.com <o...@nc.rr.com>:

Flavio Hendry

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Jul 27, 2007, 11:15:02 AM7/27/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com, Mats Elfström
mats, agreed that mitab is better, I always use mitab to write when
using FME. our experiance is that mfal is often outdated. i.e. we had
problems with swiss projection in the past. but isn't sweden=switzerland
to americans ;-) ............

Bill Thoen

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Jul 27, 2007, 12:01:22 PM7/27/07
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robert crossley wrote:
> We are being asked to expand the functionality of what we do considerably,
> and increasing will require better form handling.
> I was hanging my hat on a .NET version of MapInfo Pro. For the last 5 years
> I have been telling them I will move when MIPro goes to .NET
> The question is, If someone was going pay to redevelop the whole suite of
> products, what would we do it in?
> Java/ MapX?
> Java Client/ MapExtreme (but they want to be able to work unconnected
> sometimes)
> MapGuide?
> UDig?
>
> Comments welcome please?
>

Asking what language and tools one would use to develop their next
generation of spatially-enabled applications is begging for lots of
biased opinion, but I've been looking down this road too. I expect that
MapBasic will be with us for the foreseeable future, so I plan to
continue to use it and MapInfo for developing desktop applications.

But the siren call of Internet is making me look hard at the future, and
that's not going to be MapBasic. So I've tried C# and MapXtreme and
that's not bad, but to deploy applications based on this over the
Internet is expensive, so it's a viable options for only for the largest
applications. In fact, I've been sort of appalled at the prices of
software licenses and their restrictive conditions, so I'm exploring the
Open Source alternatives.

I've set up a collection of tools based on MapServer (map display) and
PostgerSQL with the PostGIS and GEOS extensions (for spatially-enabled
database management), into which I've included support libraries GDAL,
OGR and MITAB (for GIS file conversion and MapInfo TAB support) and
PROJ4 (for map projection support). For languages, I'm experimenting
with PHP mapscript, Perl (PL/pgSQL, PostgreSQL's scripting language),
and javascript.

It may seem like a lot to get a grip on, but all this does pretty much
work well together, and to do all the things I might want to do, I need
software that can do a lot. I'm finding that MapServer and PostgreSQL
seem to be as good as MapXtreme and Oracle or SQL Server, and certainly
better than ArcIMS, and they don't cost me a penny for licensing and
there's no restrictions on deploying applications using them (except for
conditions set by the Open Source GPL license).

The one weak area I see is in support for building a good user
interface. Writing web-based forms in HTML is a real pain, and the
selection of web form controls is limited (noticeably absent are
database grids), and there's a lack of control event triggers. Probably
all fixable with some javascript, but that's not in my skill set yet.

But I'm still on the learning curve, and working on a pilot for a large
application, so the jury's still out, but so far this route looks pretty
viable. It's also interesting to see who's showing up on the
MAPSERVER_USERS and PostGIS mailing lists -- I see a lot of familiar
MapInfo-L names!

- Bill Thoen

David Reid

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Jul 27, 2007, 12:13:44 PM7/27/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com
Have to through my 2¢ worth in as an individual license holder, who
purchased his initial license, and concurrent upgrades out of his own pocket
without any compensation or reimbursement from his employer or anyone else.

The prices are already stiff for me, and the sole reason I don't keep up
with every single upgrade that comes out. In recent years, the bug fixes and
new features haven't warranted the high cost of upgraded.

Furthermore, purchasing my own license, I have no intention, nor desire, no
way-no how, of letting a "buddy have a copy". I've made several people mad
over the years because I wouldn't "burn them a copy of my mapping software".
HELL!!! I have a hard enough time paying for it myself, darned if I'm gonna
burn copys for "buddys"!!!

I still give PBMI benefit of the doubt, I'm sure they could understand, it
would be easy for someone who uses Mapinfo such as I may have a number of
occasions in one year to have to reinstall. In the past 12 months, I've
installed or reinstalled 3 times, one after a serous crash, one on a new PC,
the most recently after a hard drive failure I attribute to using my laptop
in a vehicle day in and day out. Let's not forget installing it on a hard
drive you have Windows 2000 running on, installed on another hard drive
running XP, there's a total of five installs in a 12 month span for the
single individual and on only two different machines, the privous one taken
out of service!

I'm hoping and planning on upgrading to 9 by or before September, should
this license issue be as bad as everyone is elluding to, it will be my last
upgrade. I'm not made out of money, and have yet to find a nursery what
sells money trees!


David Reid

-----Original Message-----
From: mapi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:mapi...@googlegroups.com] On

robert crossley

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Jul 27, 2007, 5:44:34 PM7/27/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com

Bill,

We are doing a lot with that at present with PostGIS and MapServer and are very impressed.  They are both very mature projects.

 

For a client control, take a look at the pmapper project with mapserver (www.pmapper.net).  BTW, pmappers live demos don't seem to work on their site, but the references to sites in their gallery do.  http://www.pmapper.net/gallery.shtml

 

I did a google maps like Active X about 6 years ago for one client (using MapServer as a rendering engine and ER Mapper to stream and cache underlying images for speed).  With the new security levels imposed by browsers now, you generally have to be quite determined to get a mapping site which uses installed Active X or applets.  We have since reproduced this with pmapper (except for the streaming images) which uses no active X or installed applets. PMapper uses pure html and javascript and ajax to give similar performance.  It uses PHP on the back end.  You can customise its interface and also add your own plug ins as well.  And for the really serious, you can edit the core code.

 

The whole system works really well.

 

I am looking for something to work off line as well as on-line though and mapinfo's ability to work with Oracle or Spatialware and use downloaded data while off-line but then reconciling back to the server is attractive.

 

R

 

-------------------------------------------

Robert Crossley

Agtrix P/L Australia

 

Far Southern Queensland Office:

Unit 6, 2 Bonanza Drive

Billinudgel NSW 2483

AUSTRALIA

Postal:

PO Box 63

New Brighton 2483

 

P: 61 2 6680 1309

F: 61 2 6680 5214

E: rob...@agtrix.com

W: www.agtrix.com

 

Brisbane Office:

109 Milsom St

Cooparoo  4151

Queensland

P: 61 7 3843 3363

-----Original Message-----
From: mapi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:mapi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bill Thoen
Sent: Saturday, 28 July 2007 2:01 AM
To: mapi...@googlegroups.com

 

 

 

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Bill Thoen

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Jul 27, 2007, 6:30:03 PM7/27/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com
robert crossley wrote:
>
> I am looking for something to work off line as well as on-line though
> and mapinfo's ability to work with Oracle or Spatialware and use
> downloaded data while off-line but then reconciling back to the server
> is attractive.
>
Is it out of the question to load the Apache and MapServer servers on
those machines? That way you can connect to http://localhost and it
looks no different than if you were online ('cept the performance is as
fast as a local machine can be.)

Gentreau

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Jul 28, 2007, 4:47:38 AM7/28/07
to MapInfo-L
"According to the manual, if you need to transfer MapInfo (because
you
rebuild or get a new machine) you should 'transfer' your license to
MapInfo
before you remove the software. This then puts the license back on
MapInfos
license server and you can then use that license again on the new
machine."

So how would that work when a machne has had a hard disk crash ??
Are we supposed to uninstall the software just before the disk fails?

Can't say I'm impressed by version 9 at all so far, if anything I'm
more and more persuaded that this upgrade is more of a downgrade. Loss
of backward compatability, increased price, more restrictive
licencing, sonds like a recipe to alienate customers, not attract
them.

Mr Grumpy.
(Gentreau)


On Jul 27, 3:05 pm, "James Stott" <jamessto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sue,
>
> According to the manual, if you need to transfer MapInfo (because you
> rebuild or get a new machine) you should 'transfer' your license to MapInfo
> before you remove the software. This then puts the license back on MapInfos
> license server and you can then use that license again on the new machine.
>
> The one thing from the manual that I have a query about is that it states:
>
> "Your organization is limited to two license transfers per year, regardless
> of the number of licenses"
>
> Does this mean you can only do this process twice no matter how many
> licenses you have?
>
> James
>

> > e-mail susa...@powys.gov.uk

> > Council.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

nicholas....@mainroads.qld.gov.au

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Jul 29, 2007, 7:50:41 PM7/29/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com

> Mats.E

> Hi All!

> Looking forward to the delivery of version 9, I decided to look at the
> available documentation.
> After having read the release notes, I think I will wait for the first
> service pack which ought to come pretty soon.
> Im my view, the reported known problems of version 9 fall into three
> categories.

> 1 Licensing and installation problems.
> It seems that PB Mapinfo have adapted a new licensing scheme, and that
> this causes a number of problems. This is counter-productive and
> user-unfriendly, and uncalled for.
> However, concurrent licensing seemed interesting. But note that the
> cost for _one_ concurrent license equals _four_ standalone licenses.

I work for an organisation of 4000 employees, of which approximately
800 have MapInfo installed.

Naturally, we have a firewall controlling access to the internet.

MapInfo 9 cannot get through the firewall to access the liscence
server.

nick


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robert crossley

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Aug 2, 2007, 11:12:51 AM8/2/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com

Hi all,

 

This hypothetical question is no longer hypothetical, so we are investigating options fo redveloping a large MapBasic program into a better programming environment.

 

So, for the development of our existing MapBasic apps, we are leaning towards the idea of a .NET thick client application that incorporates fairly sophisticated GIS functionailty.  The funding clients are microsoft ortientated and already have invested in Spatialware.  A mapinfo based solution would be most appropriate. 

 

MapExtreme obviously needs to be investigated. I have heard that the pricing regime for MapExtreme is fairly extreme.  Is this correct?  This industry has already invested a fair amount into MapInfo.  A number of clients will reject moving to the new system if the set up cost is too high.

 

Any stories to relate on its applicability to develop desktop applications that will enable spatial object editing and manipulation, high quality map production, or ability to work disconnected from a server and reconcile with Spatial databases like Spatialware or Oracle (as MIPro can).

 

In answer to Bill's comment:

Bill thoen said:

>Is it out of the question to load the Apache and MapServer servers on

>those machines? That way you can connect to http://localhost and it

>looks no different than if you were online ('cept the performance is as

>fast as a local machine can be.)

 

Bill, we are in fact looking at this option for certain applications, but only where we are supplying a purpose configured computer.

 

I think the idea of using this as an alternative to a GIS app may be impractical in most situations as (1) can you imagine telling an IT department that you must install appache, php etc etc on individual desktops to run our mapping app? (we can't even get some of them to install java Runtime), and (2) web apps on the main part do not allow snapping and selection interactivity that you need for good editing interaction.  You would have to write all of that stuff yourself.

 

We are, however, investigating this option for a vehicle mounted touch screen device that has been built and configured for the sole purpose of running a simple GIS enabled app.  The current thread on GPS for PDA's is interesting for me as well.  MapServer has the advantage of integrating well with PostGIS, and thus has the potential for using database reconciliation to reconcile data with a central server.  It may come to nothing though.

 

 

R

-----Original Message-----
From: mapi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:mapi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bill Thoen
Sent: Saturday, 28 July 2007 8:30 AM
To: mapi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [MI-L] Re: Hypothetical Question on Programming Future.

 

 

robert crossley wrote:

 

 

 

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robert crossley

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Aug 2, 2007, 11:55:00 AM8/2/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com

One other option is worth considering. The main reason we want to move off Mapbasic is the poor dialogs available (no control arrays, no programatical manipulation of controls, difficult event handling).

 

How difficult would it to continue with a MapBasic app, and use something like .NET to create forms that the base data is provided from MapInfo, and the results passed back to MI. Perhaps even while the dialog is open?

 

We could then continue to use the MapBasic code for stuff like map production (does MapExtreme have a layout object?)

 

I noticed Ian Tidy had mentioned this.

 

R

 

-------------------------------------------

Robert Crossley

Agtrix P/L Australia

 

Far Southern Queensland Office:

Unit 6, 2 Bonanza Drive

Billinudgel NSW 2483

AUSTRALIA

Postal:

PO Box 63

New Brighton 2483

 

P: 61 2 6680 1309

F: 61 2 6680 5214

E: rob...@agtrix.com

W: www.agtrix.com

 

 

28°30'14.81"S

153°31'41.79"E

 

Brisbane Office:

109 Milsom St

Cooparoo  4151

Queensland

P: 61 7 3843 3363

Jon Gramm

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Aug 2, 2007, 7:08:08 PM8/2/07
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Your concerns have been on the minds of many.
The stagnation of development and actual improvements to Mapinfo/Mapbasic over the past three versions have really not justified the upgrade or maintenance costs.
I have used Mapinfo since Version 3, and Mapbasic since Version 5, and while I am all for stability and backward compatibility, I honestly believe the management at Mapinfo has been resting on their laurels since the introduction of Version 7. If my memory serves me correctly there was a new object model introduced with Version 5.5 or Version 6.0, since then the improvements have been very slow in being introduced.
 
I truly don't want to compare packages, but I will use this to illustrate what I believe to be the difference between progressive/aggressive companies, and passive/complacent software companies.
 
I purchased Manifold (Universal) Version 6.0 when it was first released in 2004 for $525.00.
It allowed scripting in any language that was supported by Microsoft
(VB, VC++, VC#, Java, Perl, ETC..)
as well as the development of standalone packages and IMS using its object model.
While the object model was not very mature, the package overall had many useful features.
 
(Universal includes Business tools and Surface tools as well as Geocoding. So you get the functionality of Mapmarker, Vertical Mapper, Spatial Analyst & 3D Analyst all in one package for less than half the cost of the base Mapinfo or ESRI package)
 
Since 2004 Manifold has released 6.5 & Version 7 as well as numerous service packs or decimal release versions. These upgrades have only cost me $50.00 and that was for the release of 6.5. Version 7 was a free upgrade for users of Version 6.5.
With each release there were literally hundreds of new features added, modified, or improved upon.
Manifold has also supported 64 bit operating systems since the release of Version 7.xxx
It supports Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, natively, as well as numerous other database files.
It is difficult to list all of the things that it supports, but the point is, they continually work on improving the product. They are firmly embracing .NET and will be releasing Version 8, probably before the end of the year.
I am not saying it is perfect, it still has flaws, and things that I wish it would do better, but I am very impressed with the progress that has been made, and the value of the package.
Sometimes a price has to be paid for progress, and in some cases Legacy packages have to fall by the wayside, and I also understand the great deal of effort it takes to make a transition to other Operating systems, development packages, frameworks and the like, but it seems to me that Mapinfo has not made a concerted effort to move forward in any of these areas for the past several releases, and when Project Grande was put on the shelf, I was very disappointed.
I don't want to buy another package (MapExtreme) to move into the .NET world with Mapinfo products.
I would truly like dialog/form builder tools in Mapbasic, and eventually I would like support for the .NET framework in Mapinfo/Mapbasic, and sooner would be better than later.
 
I build applications for both Mapinfo and Manifold now, but I am making more progress in C# for the Manifold applications than I am in Mapbasic for Mapinfo.
This leaves me with mixed emotions, I have been a very loyal Mapifo/Mapbasic user and supporter in the industry that I work in for the past 14 years, but if I can accomplish more of what I need and want in a package that costs half as much, and get better support, and more features with the less expensive package, wouldn't I be a fool not to put all of my efforts into the other package?
Yes, the stability of Mapinfo/Mapbasic is nice, and by stability I mean consistency of the interface, and the evolutionary changes to the object model and development package, but I do feel that more progress should have been made, and many more features should have been introduced over the past few versions.
 
Just another fool's opinion.
 
Regards,
 
Jon Gramm

robert crossley

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Aug 2, 2007, 9:24:57 PM8/2/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com

Thanks for the detail. Your response strikes a chord with me as I have had a similar involvement with MapInfo. I had been hanging my hat on Project Grande for the last few years as well as my direction forward, and now I have to reevaluate where to go.

 

I have an added issue in that my application space is agriculture, and none of the features like geocoding mean anything to us. Much of MapInfos functionality developed for business application does give us much additional functionality at all. We are in a space where Arc now competes very well.

 

Over my time, MapInfo has become a corporate business, and the pimply faced kids I used to work with are now regional managers. Its more nimble low cost competitors are biting at its heels, and they have their evangelists saying look at all you can do with product X for not as much money as MapInfo. That used to be MapInfo’s space. ArcInfo still says its better (some things never change), but now they actually have a product that competes directly with MapInfo Pro.

 

Not only have the products evolved, however, my clients have gone from a few guys using a mapping package to being spatially enabled corporate data managers. Mapping is just part of their business. They are not hick aggies, but their business systems are recognized as cutting edge in the wider business community. Whatever systems we develop now have to work in a corporate environment. MapInfo is very good at that. Perhaps we have to move with them, and so MapExtreme has to be a strong contenter. Then again, maybe we don’t. I will look at Manifold again.

 

Thanks for the thoughts.

 

r

 

-------------------------------------------

Robert Crossley

Agtrix P/L Australia

 

Far Southern Queensland Office:

Unit 6, 2 Bonanza Drive

Billinudgel NSW 2483

AUSTRALIA

Postal:

PO Box 63

New Brighton 2483

 

P: 61 2 6680 1309

F: 61 2 6680 5214

E: rob...@agtrix.com

W: www.agtrix.com

 

 

28°30'14.81"S

153°31'41.79"E

 

Brisbane Office:

109 Milsom St

Cooparoo  4151

Queensland

P: 61 7 3843 3363

William Donaldson

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Aug 2, 2007, 9:38:17 PM8/2/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com

I wish to add my comments on Jon's essay :)

 

I too have been not been impressed with "the major improvements" in each release of MapInfo ... it certainly does not justify the big upgrade price increases they ask. I remember a few comments on MapInfo-L over the years saying that people are still happy with version 6.5 .....

 

The new features in version 9.0 can be counted on one-hand, possibly two (depending on what you consider useful or a major improvement)

 

Earlier this year, I invested in ArcGIS 9.2 and already there have been three service pack releases (with new added features in each). I have already started to create and migrate some clients data across to personal geodatabases. Why? Because for my work, there is much more functionality in the ArcGIS environment.

 

I also use Encom's Discover and they too have had two major releases in the past year. The latest one (v 9.0, out today) has a whole swag of major useful improvements (at a cheaper annual maintenance fee than MapInfo's) http://web2.encom.com.au/pdfs/DiscoverAdvancesSheet_%209.0.14.pdf

 

The main reasons I stay with MapInfo is because of:

 

1) The Discover add-on (for geological-related work).

 

2) I also am on the maintenance plan so that I can stay current with "the new features" (only because I give one-on-one training in MapInfo and thus have to stay current)

 

MapInfo Professional needs a good shakeup to bring it into the current century. I've used it for over 13 years, and the interface hasn't changed, and several required improvements (that I've posted on both the wish list and discussed on MapInfo-L) have never eventuated.

 

Get back to me in a year. I expect to be better skilled with my ArcGIS 9.2 (probably 10 by then) and then may really be leading the charge advising clients to adopt ESRI over MapInfo.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

Jon Gramm

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Aug 3, 2007, 12:53:17 AM8/3/07
to mapi...@googlegroups.com
I have also explored the ESRI products, and have gotten quite familiar with them since Version 8.
 
My biggest issues with the ESRI products are Cost, Training, overall productivity, and stability.
 
I work in a production environment, I produce multiple maps for field work every day, and the amount of data I process in Mapinfo on a daily basis is pretty amazing. It is true that most all of this is automated through Mapbasic routines I have written, but I believe my ability to place this data on a map on a daily basis in Arcmap would be very difficult until I automate the processes.
 
Most of the companies I work with that use the ESRI products have someone dedicated to maintaining the map and the data on a full time basis. I don't have that luxury, I work in the field during the day, process the data in the evening, and have the maps for the next day ready by the next morning.
 
I also train others in the use of the Mapping Packages that I have developed, and so far it has not been more than a couple of hours of training, the entry point for Mapinfo is much simpler than it is for the ESRI products. (Simple, Single interface, and so on.)
I do not dispute the power of ESRI, nor do I dispute their entrenchment in the GIS industry, but I can accomplish what I need so much faster with fewer limitations in Mapinfo.
 
So far Manifold takes the middle ground, it is much more powerful than Mapinfo, manages data better than both the ESRI and Mapinfo products, has a simple entry point, but operations are different from both, not in a bad way, but in a way that will have you scratching your head at times.
Their support for programming with Visual Studio products and the ability to access a great deal of their object model has encouraged me to expand my programming capabilities into using VC#.
For me to be able to do what I have spent $600 dollars on in Manifold, would cost me about $3000.00 dollars with Mapinfo products (Mapinfo/Mapbasic/Vertical Mapper), and about $4500.00 dollars with the ESRI products (ArcGis/Spatial Analyst/3D Analyst).
 
I still prefer Mapinfo for a production mapping environment, it makes great maps, it is that simple.
ESRI products give a great deal more functionality with more time being spent generating a final output, and maintaining the data.
Manifold does not make great maps yet, but it manages the data very easily and quickly and has more functionality than anything costing 5 to 10 times as much. It is just not easy to convince people of its capabilities when they see how little it costs.
 
In the near future, I believe that I will be using Manifold exclusively for Mapping/Cartography and data analysis, the product is moving too fast for me to ignore it.
 
The other thing that I truly appreciate about Manifold is that I have been able to solve problems that I would never have been able to with either ESRI or Mapinfo, this includes project design in three dimensions, importing and exporting of data in formats unsupported by ESRI or Mapinfo, and reprojecting and georeferencing projects that were erroneous or need transformation.
 
Currently Mapinfo is what I earn my living with, Manifold is the multipurpose tool that I use to make my Mapinfo work easier or possible, and ESRI is not really part of the equation.
 
I hope Mapinfo loses their complacent stance on development and gets aggressive, and even though they do not consider themselves a GIS product, it is being used that way by many.
 
All three packages have their limitations, quirks etc, but I believe currently Manifold has the fewest, but the biggest one is in the Cartography department.
 
Regards,
 
Jon Gramm


 
On 8/2/07, William Donaldson <william....@bigpond.com> wrote:

I wish to add my comments on Jon's essay :)

 

I too have been not been impressed with "the major improvements" in each release of MapInfo ... it certainly does not justify the big upgrade price increases they ask. I remember a few comments on MapInfo-L over the years saying that people are still happy with version 6.5 .....

 

The new features in version 9.0 can be counted on one-hand, possibly two (depending on what you consider useful or a major improvement)

 

Earlier this year, I invested in ArcGIS 9.2 and already there have been three service pack releases (with new added features in each). I have already started to create and migrate some clients data across to personal geodatabases. Why? Because for my work, there is much more functionality in the ArcGIS environment.

 

I also use Encom's Discover and they too have had two major releases in the past year. The latest one (v 9.0, out today) has a whole swag of major useful improvements (at a cheaper annual maintenance fee than MapInfo's) http://web2.encom.com.au/pdfs/DiscoverAdvancesSheet_%209.0.14.pdf

 

The main reasons I stay with MapInfo is because of:

 

1) The Discover add-on (for geological-related work).

 

2) I also am on the maintenance plan so that I can stay current with "the new features" (only because I give one-on-one training in MapInfo and thus have to stay current)

 

MapInfo Professional needs a good shakeup to bring it into the current century. I've used it for over 13 years, and the interface hasn't changed, and several required improvements (that I've posted on both the wish list and discussed on MapInfo-L) have never eventuated.

 

Get back to me in a year. I expect to be better skilled with my ArcGIS 9.2 (probably 10 by then) and then may really be leading the charge advising clients to adopt ESRI over MapInfo.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

 

mroswell

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Aug 22, 2007, 12:06:06 AM8/22/07
to MapInfo-L
Hi!

I'm a long-ago frequent MapInfo-L contributor, engrossed by the
discussion.

(I created "Useful Resources for MapInfo Users and All People who Love
Maps," in the 1990s, but haven't updated it for years.)

I am giving Manifold a serious whirl.

If you join a Manifold Google Group, you'll be the third member: So
far I've found one other Manifold person.
http://groups.google.com/group/manifold/
(The title says Mid-Atlantic, but you're welcome to join regardless of
where you use Manifold.)

There's a Manifold-owned web forum that's very helpful--the central
resource, but I miss more open-ended discussion.

Hoping to connect,

Margie Roswell
http://manifolder.wordpress.com
(Less wordy than most blogs--basically just high-quality links)


On Aug 3, 12:53 am, "Jon Gramm" <jbgr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> ...
> So far Manifold takes the middle ground...
> ...

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