There Be Dragons – Uncharted Internet Mapping

2010 was full of great technology and innovations (see iPad and MapGuide 2011). 

After 365 Post Cards, I managed to send out for last year’s resolution (let me know if you didn’t get one), I am going to have to out-do that one this year. 

This year’s resolution involves location, location, location.

While speaking at Autodesk University this year in Las Vegas, someone in my class asked about how easy is it to install MapGuide on Linux.  Since I hadn’t done it for a while,  ( MapGuide Open Source 2.0 on Fedora was my last attempt (successful by the way)), I decided to give it a try today.

I cheated a little and downloaded a pre-made CENTOS 5.4 image from http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/ 

Then I stuck the MapGuide Enterprise 2011 DVD into the virtual drive and an install page opened in Firefox.

I clicked on each install and… nothing.  Ok that part wasn’t easy as walking, so I looked at the source code and decided to install the FDO, Server and Web Extensions (all 3) manually.

This part was fairly easy.  I browsed to EF/Linux/Fdo/ and double clicked on “install” – chose Run in Terminal.

I did the same for:

EF/Linux/Server/
EF/Linux/Web/

And all I had to do was start MapGuide and Apache and I was up and running.

In a Terminal Window, browse to:
/opt/Autodesk/mapguideenterprise2011/server/bin/ and enter:  ./mgserverd.sh

Then browse to:
/opt/Autodesk/mapguideenterprise2011/webserverextensions/apache2/bin/ and enter: ./apachectl start

And just to prove it to myself that everything worked, I loaded some SHP files using MapGuide Studio connecting to that CENTOS 5.4 machine.

Easy as walking (well it’s a little slippery and snowy in Guelph today).

Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise 2011 service pack 1 just came out on Friday.  It seems to fix items in Server, Web Extensions and MapGuide Studio…

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=15915095&linkID=9242179

Two things that MapGuide requires that would make it really rock (and would be “game changers”)

1. FDO Provider for DWG with Object Data and Link Template (just the key) support (like in MG 6.5)

2. WFS-T Support so we can use the OpenLayers save button for editing data natively (like GeoServer)

The first is definitely the highest priority and the second would save hundreds of hours programming.

I’ve had a few questions lately about the SQL Server and Oracle datastores created by Map 3D 2011. 

These datastores have a number of Metadata tables that are in the database.  (For example,  F_CLASSDEFINITION or F_ATTRIBUTEDEFINTION).   These tables are created by Map 3D for managing data and classes within the database.  Map 3D even adds a REVISION NUMBER  and CLASSID to the table that stores you geographic data.

However, many people wish to store their data in a more Generic SQL Server or Oracle way and not leverage the metadata tables that Map 3D creates.  Map 3D calls these Foreign Datastores. 

If you choose to do this, you may find it difficult to create tables on the fly through BULK COPY within Map 3D.  (you can automatically create tables this way if you utilize the metadata that Map 3D creates).

Note: Bulk Copy works fine with Foreign Datastores if the tables are already set up in the database.

 So how do I load data from Scratch without Map 3D?  Let’s start with a SHAPEFILE…

First ORACLE:
Just download the FDO2FDO tool from SL-KING.  You can use the Express Fdo2Fdo > SHP to Oracle.

 This works nicely, but there is not a SQL Server Express component, and I’ve had problems using FDO2FDO with SQL Server…so..

Use Morten Nielsen’s SHAPE2SQL tool.  This is a really nice tool.  I like that you can set the SRID.

 And then the data is in SQL Server 2008 and Oracle…you can connect with Map 3D 2011 and edit, delete and add all the spatial data you wish.

Then you can draw directly into SQL Server or Oracle from within Map 3D 2011.

Today I gave my intro to MapGuide Open Source tutorial.  All my videos are available on youtube at http://youtube.com/user/mapguideguy

The turnout was pretty good, more than 25, but I think the MapGuide community really will need to “represent” next year in at FOSS4G 2011 in Denver.

Once class I really loved today was the WorldVision project collecting medical status information (and mapping them) with cell phones with SMAP.  Really interesting and important work from the field.

I have sat in some very interesting Tutorials and Sessions today here in Barcelona at FOSS4G 2010.

What really caught my eye was the gvSIG Mobile application.

It’s a handheld application (for ANDROID phones only) that enables you to edit and create SHP, GML, KML, GPX formats.  The forms are XML and can be created with ThinG and utilized on the Android to draw, edit and add attribute data.

I really liked what I saw and can see all sort of applications for this.  I just hope there is a path where iPhone and Blackberry are supported…

Es bueno!  So this morning I rode my trusty BikeFriday up to the University and sat in the OpenLayers session.  I love this technology.  It really is the ultimate mash-up client.  You can have map in your browser with  Google Maps, Yahoo, Bing, OpenStreetMap, ESRI, GeoRSS and of course MapGuide are real-time.  Sweet!

During the Plenary, I really liked Schuyler Erle’s talk on Crowdsourcing and how 600 disparate people around the world pooled their skills to contribute to a more detailed map and information after the earthquake in Haiti.  This was done with OpenStreetMap and became the de-factor map for emergency and aid agencies on the ground.  Wow.

He mentioned that this was due to people using Satellite imagery donated from various sources (i.e. Google, GeoEye, etc)  to get the latest images, so people could vectorize them.  These images are not forthcoming with Pakistan due to a lack of data sharing agreements with NGOs.  Wow.

There are a lot of opportunities for geospatial people to use their power for good!