In this submission, a fix for the patch we add to the SQL engine. One character is the difference between working code and epic fail…

This submission switches the provider to compile against SQLite 3.6.2. Apart from making universe collapse imminent, this comes with a nice performance boost of up to 2x for feature reads.

-J

Well, this evening a new RFC was presented to the MapGuide project steering committee to replace PROJ.4 with CS-Map. Guess I was wrong about the beating part… but am still very happy about the joining

I’d imagine that this took a bit of work, but Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise has always used CS-Map, so most of the code was probably already sitting there waiting to go. I’m a little sad to see PROJ.4 replaced, and have some questions about compatibility with existing installs, but this has always been one of our pain points integrating MapGuide Open Source with other corporate applications (FME, Autodesk Map, etc) that used CS-Map. It will be great to see this problem go away.

-J

With release 0.50 of FDO Toolbox, Jackie has done it again by allowing users to quickly take data from both spatial (FDO) data sources, and non-spatial (OLEDB) data sources, join them together, and write out performance-optimized files. This is a huge boon for folks that need to do this and can’t afford best-of-breed proprietary tools like Safe Software’s FME.

Jackie has really impressed me with the rapid development of this tool as well as his focus on providing value in three distinct areas. First, FDO Toolbox has a great GUI for FDO data transfer and administration. Second, the command line capabilities allow you to set up scheduled translations to keep your SDF files in sync with your corporate data stores. Finally, FDO Toolbox has a minimal profile and can easily be used by install scripts that need to load data, register FDO providers, and other tasks during an automated application installation.

What’s next on the horizon? Jackie’s recent post on an FDO plug-in for SharpMap provides a hint… spatial data inspection coming soon to FDO Toolbox! Now if there was only a way of plugging FDO Toolbox into MapGuide Maestro to transform data and either create packages or load data directly into MapGuide.

-J

The closest I’ve got to Informix is seeing it in an ESRI employee’s custom command prompt (”Informix Rules>” or something like that) at the 2001 UC, but I’m sure that this is great news for corporations that have data stored via the Spatial DataBlade. FDO increases transparency for Informix data, allowing simple web-based publishing with MapGuide Open Source, and updates and map production using desktop applications such as Autodesk Map 3D.

-J

Why is this significant? Basically, because coordinate system identification and transformation is critical to almost every geospatial application. The bus factor on CS projects is generally extremely low, and they require a high degree of specialized knowledge to deliver accurate results. Having multiple projects out there means that differences in coordinate system handling and metadata can create a barrier to data sharing and interoperability. Making CS-Map open source allows open collaboration between CS-Map, PROJ.4, and other open source coordinate libraries. This was recognized in the community quite quickly, and the MetaCRS project was set up in January to allow open communication and collaboration between these projects.

This collaboration is already bearing fruit. Between Oracle 9 and Oracle 10, coordinate system handling changed considerably. Seeing this, GDAL / OGR developers working on an Oracle driver posted to the MetaCRS mailing list asking for feedback. As a result of this conversation, OGR will be calling out to CS-Map to handle Oracle coordinate systems, joining (or maybe even beating) MapGuide as an early adopter of open source CS-Map. It is clear that MetaCRS provides great value as a key initiative in open source geospatial, and I wholeheartedly support its imminent application to enter OSGeo’s incubation process.

For those of you who care, the source code for CS-Map is available on the OSGeo infrastructure. You can access it through either raw SVN, or in a more human-friendly Trac interface.

Congratulations to Autodesk and Norm Olsen for taking this important step, and to the MetaCRS community for joining together to take advantage of it!

-J

With this tool, you can read KML files from MapGuide, and read/write KML using FDO2FDO or Autodesk Map 3D. This provider is still early in development, so get your feedback in now while you can still have an impact on how it works when it’s released.

As an aside, this is the first (soon to be) open source project I know of which uses Google’s libkml.

-J

I first heard about FDO Toolbox when I got a Google Alert about Jackie Ng’s initial blog post back on July 9th. Since that time, Jackie has posted seven new point releases. That’s seven releases in eleven nineteen days, people!.

Obviously, this insane development pace can’t continue forever, but up until now Jackie has been working furiously with a good number of fixes and new features in each release. Many of the enhancements and modifications have come from external suggestions, so if you try it out and find that it’s missing something or think it could be doing something better, don’t hesitate to make a suggestion.

-J

In September of last year, Kenneth Skovhede changed this with the introduction of Map Studio Open Source. This application, built using C# and supported under .Net and Mono, was immediately more functional that Web Studio.

Fast forward seven months. Having built considerable support and functionality in a short amount of time, Map Studio Open Source was clearly a viable project and was providing benefit to the MapGuide Open Source community. After some discussions between Kenneth and the MapGuide project steering committee, an RFC was created to bring Map Studio Open Source officially into the MapGuide fold. This included a change of name to MapGuide Maestro and a move from Google Code to MapGuide’s OSGeo-hosted wiki, bug tracking, source control, and download services.

If you’re interested in seeing what it looks like, there are some screen shots on the MapGuide wiki… but beware; this project is under rapid development (release early and often) and some of the images are already out of date

My advice? Don’t even look at the screenshots, just download Maestro and start using it. Even if you have the full Autodesk MapGuide Studio application, there are some things that Maestro does far better, like retaining inter-resource references when moving things in your repository, or defining raster configuration files for unmanaged image resources. And if you run into problems, make sure to report them so that they can be fixed quickly (and they probably will be).

-J

Right now, the agenda is pretty basic: a couple technical presentations, brief chapter business, and pizza all at the Sierra Systems offices a few blocks from the GeoWeb conference.

If you’re interested in coming, or possibly presenting, sign up for our mailing list and let us know so that we can handle the vast numbers

-J

Some interesting entries have been nominated. In particular, FDO and Fusion (both open source applications) are competing alongside other prominent applications in the Innovator Award category.

Full disclosure: My work on earth.nanaimo.ca (built with MapGuide Open Source technology) is nominated for the Public Enterprise category. Please only vote for it if you think it’s the most deserving solution in this category.

-J