Concering the comment about Maptitude's raster capacity, Maptitude does NOT do much "handling" of raster imagery. Putting a picture layer on a map is nice, used it a lot, but that's really not much. Hopefully version 5 will have some significant raster capacity. If I need to do anything in raster - which is occuring more frequently - I use Idrisi for raster work but that is quite expensive, but it has weak vector capacity, and it is a pain to get it to interfacwe with anything else. Idrisi folks are just down the road from Newton, maybe they could get together ... In 4.8 the addition of the the TerraServer capability has been useful but unfortunately there are some serious errors in the imagery itself in my state - and I cannot find anyway to notify TerraServer developers about the problem. My town (Olympia, WA) has some panels which have nothing to do with Olympia. Same in other areas. Of course this is not Caliper's problem. A connection to Google Map would be handy. I use it all the time. It is hartening that there are GISs around that ordinary folks can afford, Maptitude and Manifold, and some pretty good open source ones. I checked out Manifold in detail; I would imagine Caliper has done the same. The need for spatial SQL in Maptitude is noted among other things, thematic mapping needs a complete re-work, but the ease of use remains and for the users I work with, Maptitude works. But the public health community is still drinking the ESRI Koolaide. I estimate that 90% of ESRI software sold to health departments is on the shelf. Make that 95%. Manifold has lots and lots of capacity, but it is not easy to learn. It is not for beginners or impatient intermediates. If one is already skilled at using another GIS I think the learning curve is steaper. In my view the operational paradigm in Manifold is of of whack. Many processes are just plain difficult for no good reason. I am always looking for GISs that health departments with scant technical resources can use, and Manifold would likely not be one of them. It is 1/2 the price of Maptitude, but using that as a criterion for buying it would backfire. Maptitude can exist in an environment with a single unsophisticated user and it can be used effectively. Most software cannot because having someone close at hand is still the best way to get up and going or resolve a problem. If you are alone with Manifold or ArcGIS and you get confused, if you do not have someone around you can ask soon and face-to-face, you just get more and more frustrated until you give up. I have seen Maptitude used in places that are pretty remote and small and they function just fine because the help is pretty good (but it needs work) and the manual can be read by ordinary non-GIS people. Most of those places have good Internet connectivity now so they can get more help. Like ESRI stuff, for users that need GIS but are not in love with GIS, 2 weeks away from Manifold and ESRI likely means starting over. I have heard many times that when users come back to Mapitude one can still make it work.
Then again, I hope Caliper has looked closely at Manifold to see what they offer. There raster capacity is pretty impressive. Dick Hoskins _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Aniruddha Banerjee Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2007 10:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Maptitude] Maptitude and DBMS Hi all (and especially the Caliper software architects): I put in the following comments in a GIS blog (website: http://www.spatiall <http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2006/12/21/fighting-manifold-or-fighting-t he-way-ive-learned-gis/> yadjusted.com/2006/12/21/fighting-manifold-or-fighting-the-way-ive-learned-g is/ ). Feel free to comment on it since I find some rather inaccurate comments (from Dimitri) about Maptitude....(you are welcome to respond) Here's the partial text: # Rudy // Mar 31, 2007 at 4:26 pm I've used all kinds of GIS since the DOS days (15 years and counting) and I can assure you that by far the best GIS software is Maptitude from Caliper Corporation. It is a vector GIS software that can also read and handle raster imagery. It's native database management is vastly superior to any other GIS (can handle all the TIGER line files of the US in one shot; it can handle one billion!! records and one million fields - unlike MS access that allows only 256 fields). It can read oracle and other DBMS without using programming. An upgrade to TransCAD (another product from Caliper) allows you to perform redistricting using integer programming and other graph theoretic methods (invert matrices and store matrices of 25 K in native format). I can go on and I am happy to debate on this issue. Oh BTY I have an advanced ArcIMS certificate from ESRI for which my previous employer paid 1000s. I use C++ and R to do programming but was never required to program for my GIS stuff. Now that's a great software. Isn't it? Rudy B., PhD Berkeley, CA # 82 Dimitri // Apr 1, 2007 at 9:25 am For all of its limitations I don't think anyone would describe Maptitude as other than as a competent and pleasant GIS. It is well-matched to its target market and has a good following. Despite its many limitations (no IMS, small number of importable formats, etc.), if you think it is the best GIS ever, well, you are entitled to your opinion. What makes for "best" in someone's eyes is not necessarily the most features or the most sophisticated capabilities but the right balance for that someone's particular needs. But this bit. "It's native database management is vastly superior to any other GIS " .is utterly silly, as Maptitude (for all of its other benefits) is rather well-known for having particularly weak DBMS capabilities. I grant you that Maptitude may be improving its products and so is getting better at DBMS, but if memory serves me right (as assisted by a quick review of the Caliper website), it seems that the following gross DBMS limitations to Maptitude still apply: To take the most obvious, Maptitude connects to DBMS using ODBC, a terribly obsolete way to go. GIS packages with better DBMS capability can connect using more modern technologies such as OLE DB or ADO .NET. Connecting to SQL Server using OLE DB is about 600 times faster, read/write, than using ODBC, so this is a very big deal. Although Maptitude is said to be able to read "oracle spatial tables" (a particularly weird way of phrasing the matter, as if there is a host of "gotcha's" waiting in the wings), there is no mention of any sophisticated ability to do read/write/edits with many simultaneous users as is normally desired with Oracle Spatial, nor of projection matching on the fly nor of any support for GeoRasters, nor of storing formatting and other key drawing characteristics. All those things are necessary if you are really working with Oracle Spatial as a fully capable client and not just as some "read-only" usage of Oracle as a one-way data source. I grant you it is cool that Maptitude can read Oracle spatial data at all, but to do so in what is apparently a highly limited way is not the way one wins standing as "vastly superior." For that matter, if you really are on top of your DBMS game you'll be able to read/write/edit not just Oracle spatial but a host of different geometry-in-DBMS data types and DBMS systems, including, for example OGC WKB and WKT, ESRI-style geometry and so on in other DBMS packages, such as SQL Server. Don't see any of that in Maptitude. There is no trace of spatial SQL within Maptitude, something you'd expect any GIS laying claim to serious chops in the DBMS world to offer. If you can't do spatial SQL you're just not in the DBMS game in GIS, not even at the beginner level let alone as the best. I'll skip over the hundreds of small, but useful, capabilities that a truly DBMS-capable GIS has and Maptitude does not (example: right click on a column and choose "change type" to instantly change type. ) and conclude with a very telling "big" thing: zero support for 64-bit code and multicore processors. Modern DBMS is multi-threaded. If you can't run multiple threads to your DBMS connection you're stuck in the dark ages. To shift gears away from DBMS to programming, since your post indicated a certain excitement at not having to do programming to do GIS stuff: not since the dark ages has any modern, interactive GIS required you towrite code to do GIS stuff, so don't be too excited that this is the case with Maptitude. It's a bit like a country cousin coming to the city and acting astonished there is indoor plumbing. The indoor plumbing is indeed great, but one should not betray too much astonishment at encountering such a convenience, which is taken for granted in modern times. :-) I don't mean any of the above as a slam at Maptitude because I happen to like that software and admire it. I especially admire Maptitude because together with packages like Manifold it helps set the precedent that one can get truly useful and pleasant GIS for a fraction of the cost of legacy stuff like ESRI. People in mainstream software markets understand that, but every bit of re-education helps for those folks still stuck in legacy notions of price/performance. So we should all praise Maptitude for helping move GIS into modern notions of price/performance. But on the way to praising Maptitude there is no need for inaccuracy, and suggesting Maptitude is the best GIS there is at DBMS is very far from the truth, hence this correction.
