Mike -
I am concerned that MapInfo has not risen to your quest. From what I read
the SDE-orientated responses against Spatial and MapInfo's tight integration
to 8i is concerning. Understand that it was a very big deal when Oracle
decided to run with MapInfo and not peruse the old model of SDE/SDO.
Other issues to contend with. First, I would like to better understand the
cost of SDE versus Oracle's Spatial component? From what I understand there
is an advantage to licensing Spatial over SDE. Second, there are strong
rumors that MapInfo Spatialware extends the functionality of Oracle's
Spatial to meet and/or exceed SDE's features. Third, I also understand that
Oracle's Spatial integration provides several orders of magnitude of
performance over SDE middleware. And lastly, MapInfo's tools, MapXtream
Java and Spatialware I have to believe offer some significant integration
and long term advantages in the Oracle 8i environment if they can be
explained.
At the end of all of this the basic question remains - for Oracle 8i
implementations what technology is superior?
The fact of that question is hidden in the confusion of the moment. ESRI has
made a rather large commitment to Microsoft via ArcInfo 8.0, its reliance on
VisualBasic and its COM versus CORBA design, and ESRI's free give-away of
SDE-Lite which only integrates to Microsoft's Access database. Oracle has
only entered its second year with 8i. And the reality is Oracle 8i is simply
flattening the competition and its spatial indexization is efficient and
reliable. Spatialization of large Oracle databases is no longer a domain of
SDE and ESRI in specific. My personal bet is Oracle's Spatial features and
ability to handle increasingly complex geographic requests will simply
improve. And hopefully for the MapInfo community we remain "in the know"
and well integrated.
And lastly the issue of MapInfo's positioning of Spatialware and its
performance on Oracle 8i is the real unknown. Spatialware has as long or
longer commitment to "openness".
Neil
aka MidNight Mapper
-----Original Message-----
From: mike james [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 10:20 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: MI SUM: Oracle Spatial Vs. ArcSDE
Hi all,
Below is my original posting followed by a summary of responses from
a number of forums (including esri-l & gis-l). It's certainly given me a
lot of food for thought and generated some additional questions.
Thank-you to all for the feedback, and I'm sure I'll have additional
material to post as I further investigate.
Regards,
Mike
----------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put
"unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
