very true,
you can't do any sort of ADO or any other development work with
Application Builder for ArcPad which you can do with MapX M
ArcPad has got a rich set of functionalities, but very less scope of
development with Appln Builder.
Except for point, no other features are creatable as on date. They will
roll it out in future releases.
You can work with DBF's as it has got a data object, but rest you can't
So I had to convert every data I wanted on the PDA into DBF's and then go
ahead.
BTW, how is MapX M per license priced at $$$
Regards
Deepak Kaul
RMSI, INDIA
"Lawley,
Russell S" To: "MapInfo-L (E-mail)"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
uk> cc:
Subject: RE: MI-L MapX Mobile Apps?
01/17/03 03:16
PM
my 2p from the point of view of a part time developer...
I did some 'exploratory' work with mapx mobile last year, and a little bit
of work with arcpad to compare...the remit was to develp a tool to capture
points, lines and polygons with structured, menu-driven attibutes, store
them in a database on a WinCE pda and get it back to a pc with out losing
anything...
map x mobile good points:
The mxMob development kit (and the microsoft evb/evb development kit.)
are/were FREE! fab! (but the total mx+evb download is c.400 megs so dont
try this in the uk on a 56k phone line!!!)
Installation was pretty straightforward once i had RTFM (twice!) you need
Nt
or win2000 i failed to get anything working in 95 or 98
I know only a little vb but the MXMob and eVB software-help-examples etc
were all very easy to use and understand.
Development for simple applications was very fast (i had 5 days to it all
from scratch including the report on how i got on..i went over-budget by 3
hours and admittedly the test app was buggy, but its potential to be fixed
with not much extra cash was obvious....main failure was developer
inability
not software limitation)
MXMob appears to do a heck of a lot.. I would call it a solid GIS
somewhere
between proviewer and an early mapinfoprofesional ( but much nearer the
professional end of that scale!!....depending upon your programming
skills,,,if you cant program you wont get far), it also has the excellent
MapX feats like multilayer selections.
I very quickly tested the ability of the software to capture, edit graphic
and attribute data in native and ADO formats...no probs here, but writing
code to manage searches/ data edits etc was a little fiddly
I would say that an accomplished programmer would go a long way with the
SDK
Downsides....
it is only an sdk (with some examples.). ie its just an active x component.
To get anything up-and running you have to program the lot (but you can
programme almost everything.....unlike arcpad which comes as a readybuilt
gis that runs vbscripts... so you will initially have to re-write the
examples or scratch build everything...that includes all menus, tools etc
etc..on teh good side it means the GUI is completely up to you and so
modularisation of 'functions' for different users is easy
I found the application became quite slow on the older iPaqs i was using
(but it was doing a lot of work thru my not-v-efficient code), not a
problem
with the newer strongarm 400 ones. the slow speed was probably due to
accessing ado files to build 'info' windows of data.
to get 'everything' to work robustly you will probably need to use eVC at
some point. the MxMobile-demo executable supplied with the SDK was built
with visual studio. i tried and tried to get evb, mxmob and a gps to work
together but my limited programming skills stopped me dead (if anyone has a
set of free functs for grabbing live GPS in MXMob with eVB let me know!)
The example of using GPS in the SDK was ok but only worked with waypoint
files not live data...
Overall mxmob has great potential for real-programmers who want to move
into developing mobile mapping without big initial outlay.. fully licenced
the applications would be very cheap compared with some of the
off-the-shelf
stuff currently available..(check out the website for current costs)
the real bargain was discovering the evb/evc software and all the ocx
plugins now available...its perfectly possible to build a mapping
application that activesyncs itself, links to gps (maybe), laser
rangefinders etc, processes mapdata into 3d to view in a PDA 3d viewer,
emails the data automatically to another user, finds the nearest pub and
switches off the tv as you set off for work... in the end, our conclusion
was that the mapping side of things actually became secondary to the
databasing opportunities and so Mapinfo has pitched it just right for
people
who need mobile-mapping functionality 'AS WELL' rather than 'ONLY'..
I only very briefly tested arcpad (we had other developers to set these
systems up for us)
Arcpad is not free, but not too expensive either, the development kit (a
scripting tool) is also 'not free' and feedback from my fellow testers was
that it seemed a lot of money (esp when they compared it with the free
evb/c
kits from microsoft....) There is software for turning mapinfo table
formats
into suitable scripts... this kind of thing is v useful and i suspect will
become more widely copied/developed
It works as a straight-out-of-the-box gis and is very arcview like. basic
functionality includes data capture and searches etc, (again id say it was
between arcexplorer and arcview), to add data capture (forms) functionality
you write scripts and they run on top of the application. It appeared to be
function rich (it did GPS no-probs) but the developers didnt actually get
to
do much 'serious' development (just making data entry forms) so i am not
sure how far it can be customised
One drawback i noted was a lack (i might be wrong) of ADO support... so
with
MapxMob i could happily populate a mapinfo flat file AND an entire pocket
access database with multiple tables and dictionaries etc at one go, whilst
the arcpad team ended up with just a flatfile (DBF format) and lots of
post-processing databasing...
I'd say that if you need GIS immediately and are capturing limited
attribute
data then arcpad would be the fastest and overall cheapest to roll out...
I also looked at the bumpf for other SDK for mobilemapping (there are
several...they all seemed pretty good.. but costs varied)
hth
R
ps
i forgot to mention...as the CDR group say in their email..
BEWARE the emulator...it is a serious pc destroyer.. filled disks,
corrupted
registry ....the works.....
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