In an effort to see where MapInfo is going with this dot-NET thing, I have been fooling around with Microsoft's Visual Studio C# IDE and MapInfo's MapXtreme 2004 free trial package. So far, all I have to say is that this development environment really rocks!
I had a few misconceptions about MapXtreme too. Turns out that your MX applications run just fine on the desktop just like any normal local Windows executables (because that's exactly what they are.) I thought you had to do everything via a web server, like it or not. You don't. However, if you DO like building distributed Internet applications, you can run your application over the web too. The core functions are designed to work in either environment. It supports normal *.TAB files, with all the attributes you want (unlike MapX which can't build a TAB file with more than one attribute.) Of course, you also have access to the entire ADO.NET suite of class functions too, so you might want to think about going beyond the old *.TAB file. I wasn't sure of this, but it seems to be true. You don't actually need Visual Studio to build applications. Just to see, I tried writing a little scrapplication to create a mappable Tab file of city locations with varying point styles in the ancient edlin line editor (a minimalist's programming environment, for sure!) The .NET SDK Framework from Microsoft is free, and that supplies the csc.exe compiler. I just compiled my app in a DOS window, with references to the MapInfo MapXtreme dlls, and it worked! But even though you CAN build .NET MapXtreme applications this way, I now think that Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE is maybe worth the outrageous thousand-clam price. Visual Studio's IDE is probably the most convenient programming tool I've ever used. However, if all you know is MapBasic, the learning curve is pretty steep. I have some Visual Basic and C background, but very little C++, so learning C# is a bit of a stretch. However, after a couple of weeks, it seems to be coming together. MapInfo's PDF documentation and Help files (while full of stupid little errors that will plague the greenhorn) are not too bad, and the MapXtreme 2004 online forum is very responsive. If you're thinking of going the .NET route with MapInfo, I don't think the transition is going to be all that horrible. It'll take effort, but it's not quite as hard as I thought it would be. But I'm curious about what others think. What warts does this Brave New World have? How will the licensing affect your businesses? For those who have tried it so far, what do you think? - Bill Thoen --------------------------------------------------------------------- List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message number: 14572
