My First Unnofficial Mapguide User is now closed, we got 75 responses
BTW: Polldaddy is nice, but how the heck do you publically publish the results without touching XML?
So here are the final comments to start with, which are mostly pretty bang on IMHO
Make Openlayers do with Fusion hacks it to do standard or make a better JS API viewer to start projects with including EXAMPLES like ESRI.
inserting and updating of oracle data still is very unstable
I would love to run on Linux, but unfortunately our IT department will only support Windows Server.
FDO providers in general are too inconsistent (i.e. implementers should not worry about datastore specifics, FDO should silently resolve things on "abstract" level).
HTTP API should be better documented
Mapguide lacks documentation still and performance is still less than acceptable against spatial data drawn from Oracle.
6.3 has big time bugs on windows
Documentation and the web API structure is quite complicated. Personally, I don't see much abstraction for map interaction. Also, the Fusion viewer needs "real" improvements in performance and stability. Everytime it seems it is there, but still not yet there.
Raster FDO Providers are still very hard to implement (ECW, SID)
mapguide is the best platform out that to allows you to author/create many maps easily in a shared repository - nothing else touches it. However MapGuide doesn't "just work" like mapguide 6.5 does. And when something doesn't work it takes a VERY long time to debug to find where the problem is. We like mapguide, but can't yet use it in a production environment because of these issues. I'm certain that continual incremental improvement will get the project to where it needs to be...
All answers are based on client's requirements, not personal preference. Most of our client's are Microsoft-based shops so Windows, .Net and SQL Server are what fits best for them.
Clarification on Q.9 - Inconsistant? Yes. Cause of frustration for me? No.
Good initial OS documentation is rapidly becoming dated. Wiki needed for initial deployment. Someone needs to walk through everything with a first time users perspective.
Explicit infos on how to update FDO providers on existing MapGuide [e.g. using 3.4.1 instead of 3.4.0] - Zipped only precompiled distribution, that is all files zipped, so that to install one has to unzip somewhere and manually configure web server [this would easy the upgrades - just for WIN] [this feature should be marked as UNSUPPORTED, and any question on mailing list about this option should be REJECTED - only for expert users!] - RSS feeds on osgeo projects
More help for MapGuide implementation on linux and problems with postgis solved
Is it possible to include OpenLayers support in the basic layouts?
While we have MGE we still use the Open Source Version.
The biggest challenge with MapGuide OS since its inception has been the raster providers.
It would be nice to improve the printing workflow, and to add support for charts (pie) on layers. MapGuide is great, keep up the good work.
UK developer selling MG solutions. Must have Stabiliity and cope with large raster datasets
Better DWG support
JOINs are a contant strain (it was dead-easy with MG 6.5)
I'm running MGE so I entered a wrong answer for Q3.
Can
I would prefer to use Fusion but have not enough time yet! I'm using the .NET API and the .NET Maestro API fifty-fifty ( I'm a little afraid of what happens with Maestro API in the future)
I realize the mail list is a large source of information, but i wish there was a more organized place where one could find example codes and generic help.
For the last one, I created mapguide central a while back, which is a starting point.
It's also important that the user community share's more examples and howto's
We need a better solution than track and a mailing list, that's so 1990's...
StackOverflow Maybe? Maybe I'll code some thing up..
As for anyone complaining about MapGuide Rasters (with GDAL), how about donating towards Trevor Wekel's GDAL Provider Initiative. Trevor used to work for AutoDesk and he knows the internals of MapGuide very well.
As a MapGuide user is having working GDAL valuable to your company? How about making it happen with a donation?
No comments:
Post a Comment