Steve makes some very good points in his email, but I still think that
there is a very strong case for direct programming support beyond
MapBasic within MI Pro.
Yes, you can utilize MI Pro from VB as it stands today, but the
interface is limitted. The major limitation is that MI Pro is an
out-of-process server, which, for those of you with less programming
experience, means that MI Pro needs to be running (albeit in the
background) as well as your own program. This means two executables
which takes up more system resources than in necessary and requires
inter-process communications for any sharing of data between them which
is much slower than communication within a single process. Secondly,
the automation server that MI Pro exposes is less than intuitive. Most
functionality is exposed by passing MapBasic commands to MapInfo which
in turn are parsed and then run just as MapBasic commands entered into
the MapBasic Window. This, of course, means that we're limitted to the
functionality exposed by MapBasic, which, as I said in my previous
email, is less than adequate for more advanced functionality. While I
think this was a wonderful way for MapInfo to get started in supporting
more advanced programming, the process is less than elegant and not even
close to efficient.
As for Steve's comments that "all these current options and future moves
require a material leap in programming talent", I agree
whole-heartedly. I am not encouraging MapInfo to abandon support for
MapBasic. I'm just suggesting that many of us have outgrown it's
abilities and are craving something better so we can add power and
functionality to the software and, hopefully, sell more of it. MapBasic
is great for simple and repetitive tasks, and needs to be kept around
for that. But I think that MapInfo shouldn't devote their efforts into
making MapBasic something that it was never intended to be - a
development environment. For that, those of us who want to do more with
the software need something better, more robust, like VB Script. MapX
is a great step in that direction, but anyone who's used MapX knows that
it doesn't compare in the amount of functionality available in MI Pro.
There are times when we need to wrap our own functionality around the
entire set of functionality offered by MI Pro, and MapX just isn't going
to cut it for that.
If what Neil said is true and MapInfo is rearchitecting the product
using COM components, then we're only one step away from this becoming
reality. If the interfaces are there, MapInfo just needs to find a way
to expose them to hacks like me.
Gary.
"Stephen L. Thompson" wrote:
> After seeing the messages over the last two days about VB et al. I
> think it's time to weigh in on the discussion.
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