Free G-NAF, Free Australian Geocoding

I have posted a request to freely publish the G-NAF Address Dataset to data.gov.au

It's 2013 and Australian companies and developers shouldn't be concerned with having to pay to use such an essential Government dataset.

Basic spatial services like geo-coding should not be costly or illegal, let's face it, lot's of people are using Google and violating their terms of service.

Please vote for this request, after all, aren't we now "Open for Business*" ?

*except when it involves Boats, on water and not Friday afternoon

Using Oracle Views with Mapguide / FDO

Using views in Oracle is a good way to access data via Mapguide/FDO,
but in order to be able to select a feature, it must have a primary key,
otherwise, selection will fail.

This is the SQL syntax to add a primary key on an Oracle View

alter view add constraint primary key () disable novalidate;

Once the view has a primary key, selection becomes available.

Bruno

From the Mapguide Users Mailing list

Performance Tip for Mapguide Tiled layers with Fusion

Internally, Fusion uses OpenLayers to display maps. By default, titled maps use a buffer factor of 2

http://dev.openlayers.org/docs/files/OpenLayers/Layer/Grid-js.html#OpenLayers.Layer.Grid.buffer

This buffer setting determines how many off screen tiles are loaded, you can tweak this option using the following syntax in your ApplicationDefinition.xml

<Map>
               <Type>MapGuide</Type>
                <SingleTile>false</SingleTile>
                <Extension>
                        <ResourceId>Library:// .....</ResourceId>
                        <Options>
                            <buffer>0</buffer>                               
                        </Options>                       
                </Extension>
</Map>

Setting buffer:0 means that only the initially visible tiles are loaded, which means as you pan, the tiles are loaded as required

MapGuide 2.2 has been released

Just a quick post, Trevor announced on the MapGuide-Users mailing list that 2.2 has been released.

Release notes and download links

Builds are available for Windows 32 bit & 64 Bit, CentOS 5.4 / RedHat 5.4 / Ubuntu 9.10 32 Bit 

It was a very long release cycle, but we wanted to ensure a high quality release.

I encourage anyone using an older version of MapGuide to upgrade.

Also, please don't ask support questions on my blog, direct them to the MapGuide-Users mailing list
*AFTER SEARCHING THE ARCHIVES FIRST*

MapGuide 2.3 optional subversion install for web tier (RFC 111)

Thanks to the 25 people who answered the MapGuide Source Control Survey Survey, the results were considered by the last Mapguide PSC meeting where RFC 111 was discussed and voted on. 

RFC 111 was adopted, a subversion checkout will be available as an option in the installer for the next major release 2.3. This allows quick deployment of new features/bug fixes for the MapGuide Viewer web apps.
This will be all managed by the user, so if you don't want to use this feature, you can either simply choose not to install it, or just install it anyway, but never do a subversion update. 

Here are the survey results:

Q1:Which versions of MapGuide are you using in production? 

2.2 (MGE 2011)					13	41.94%
2.1 (MGE 2010)					12	38.71%
Classic 6.x					3	9.68%
2.3					2	6.45%
2.0 (MGE 2009)					1	3.23%

Q2:What is you background with GIS? 

I'm a programmer who uses GIS					16	64%
Other Option					4	16%
I studied Geomatics					4	16%
I'm a novice with no programing or spatial background					1	4%

Q3: What source control systems have you worked with? 

Subversion					14	46.67%
CVS					8	26.67%
What is source control?					4	13.33%
Git					3	10%
Other Option					1	3.33%

Q4:Which MapGuide Viewer do you use? 

AJAX Viewer					13	54.17%
Fusion / Flexible Layouts					6	25%
Other Option					5	20.83%

 
Q5: Have you modified the viewer code in your installation? 

Yes					17	70.83%
No					7	29.17%

Q6:Would you like to have minor bug fixes and improvements available via Subversion?  

Yes					19	79.17%
I don't care					3	12.5%
No					2	8.33%

Q7:Have you ever manually deployed a bug fix for MapGuide? 

No					14	58.33%
Yes					10	41.67%

Q8:Have you ever upgraded Fusion using a version from the Fusion Website? 

No					15	60%
Yes					7	28%
I wanted to, but it was too hard					2	8%
Fusion has a website?					1	4%

Q9:Finally, have you ever avoided upgrading to the latest MapGuide release because of your customised code? 

Yes					11	45.83%
No					11	45.83%
I have never customised any MapGuide code					2	8.33%

MapGuide End User Survey - RFC 111 Subversion

I put forward an idea for a RFC for Mapguide, which involves deploying the MapGuide web viewer apps
(Fusion and AJAX Viewers) checked out from Subversion.

The initial proposal is MapGuide RFC 111 - Deploy Viewer Code with Subversion Attributes
with the follow up discussion over on MapGuide-Internals

There have been some questions over how the end users of MapGuide would find using this
solution. Of course it's entirely optional solution for keeping your MapGuide Server running
with the latest bug fixes / improvements for the web viewers.

So I have put together this Quick Survey to get some background on our user base.

http://zackster.polldaddy.com/s/mapguide-source-control-survey
(Poll is now closed)

SQL Server 2008: ARITHABORT error with Spatial data

This is a nice cryptic error:


UPDATE failed because the following SET options have incorrect settings: 'ARITHABORT'. Verify that SET options are correct for use with indexed views and/or indexes on computed columns and/or filtered indexes and/or query notifications and/or XML data type methods and/or spatial index operations. 

If you get the following error with a SQL Server 2008 database when your trying to update some spatial data, the solution is to check the compatibility level for the database, I was working on an application which has been around for a while and it was set to be compatible with Sql Server 2000, hence the error.

I was a bit stumped initially, as this was my first look into spatial data with MS SQL Server, luckily Jackie Ng sits next to me and he found the solution pretty quickly.

Overall, my initial impressions of the Spatial support in SQL Server is that it's pretty basic compared to Oracle which is a much more complete implementation, but I'm glad spatial is finally a standard feature. I am rather surprised that re-projection is not part of the standard feature set.

I really loathe Oracle for it's recalcitrant attitude to Oracle Spatial licensing, but having seen what Sql Server offers, I understand why Oracle still does what it does, as SQL Server is not nearly equivalent.

Of course, IMHO anyone starting out on a new project requiring a spatial database should use PostGIS period.

MapGuide 2.2 RC testing with PostgreSQL (Success)

I tried out the newer FDO PostgreSQL driver for PostGIS in the latest MapGuide 2.2 RC2 beta
with a local PostgreSQL db on Windows 7 64-bit (32-bit version of MG),

result? it works really well

Just make sure your not using version 9 of PostgreSQL , FDO 3.5 doesn't
support v9 yet, FDO 3.6/ MapGuide 2.3 will

I ended up downloading and installing the db twice as I forgot about
the lack of support for 9.0 with FDO 3.5

Remember! you need to make sure the libpq.dll's are in your system path

http://trac.osgeo.org/fdo/wiki/FdoPostgreSQLNotes

My testing was with some OSM (openstreetmap) data for Victoria, Australia
which I downloaded and loaded with osm2pgsql (use -s if you don't have lots of ram)

http://downloads.cloudmade.com/oceania/australia/victoria

IMHO, the OSM shapefile's have a nicer data structure than how the
OSM files get imported by default into PostgreSQL

Alas, the shp files have ":" in the column name which breaks SHP FDO,
PostgreSQL FDO works fine with these, translating them to _

but you can load the shape files easily into Postgres

lack of ordering support in MapGuide does still leave proper road rendering
rather inanely complex, http://trac.osgeo.org/mapguide/wiki/MapGuideRfc69

PostGIS rocks, faster than Oracle and free! Oracle's spatial licensing is so like 1990's

I wrote this, coz I figured it's important to tell some software success stories,
often people only post about problems, which can be depressing when your searching

http://mapguide-central.ennoble.com.au/

New Explore Australia website with expanded content

Explore Australia recently relaunched their website with a new design (by Thirst Studios) and heaps
of new content, including Fishing Spots, National Parks, Campsites and Caravan Parks.

So next time your going travelling anywhere around Australia, remember your Explore Australia Travel Guide !

Behind the scenes, the website was developed by Ennoble Consultancy Australia. It's powered by Coldfusion
and Oracle, with Maps produced via MapGuide Open Source and statically served using Amazon Cloudfront
and Openlayers.

MapGuide: Using Fusion with Selection Events (aka reports)

Sometimes, you just want to do simple things and it seems frustrating. I was
frustrated and I solved it, here's my contribution back!

Having come into the geo-spatial world with Autodesk MapGuide in the 6.x series (aka classic),
the world was a lot simpler. The MapGuide Open Source Classic (or
Basic Viewer) made things easy to make a url launch from a selection. Fusion is a
little different, here's some pointers :)

MapGuide Fusion (aka flexible layouts) is a bit more technical to use, but is also
far more powerful, being based on OpenLayers.

If you want to launch a report, or popup window form a selection you need to
register an event to handle the selection.

The answer is pretty simple, as this mailing list post explains.

It's all you need to know to get started and hacking.

If it doesn't work, flip into Firefox, with Firebug enabled and dump
the sel inside the function selectionCallback(sel) and add a line to
window.console.info(sel); and see what your dealing with!

Learning by trying is the best way to learn

MapGuide Central for a good starting point for playhing with MapGuide, Openlayers and Fusion.

MapGuide 2.2 Beta Release (Linux Binaries Woot !!!!!)

2.2 Beta Binaries for Windows and Linux (Redhat/Centos 5.4 & Ubuntu 9.10 ) have been posted to OSGeo.

This is the first time we have provided compiled linux binaries for MapGuide Open Source!

MapGuide 2.2 Beta Server Release Notes and Binaries and the complimentary MapGuide Maestro GUI/IDE/Authoring Tool

Please follow up any issues on the Mapguide Users Mailing List

I've joined the MapGuide PSC

As of last Monday I am now offically part of the MapGuide Project Steering Committee , along with a fellow Melbournian Jackie Ng. Thats some serious Canadian and Australian representation :)

Which means I get to help shape the future of MapGuide and help improve the project with the rest of the PSC team.

Having been an active member of the community for a couple of years now, it's nice to be recognised and join the rest of the PSC.

My main focus will be, as it has been for a while is to help get other developers on board with the project, continue to iron out the rough edges, advocate linux as a platform for MapGuide and help users on the mailing list, especially the ones who take time to ask pertinant questions after firstly doing some research themselves.

As a long time advocate of standardising FDO naming conventions and also maturing the tiling support with MapGuide, I hope to make a difference!

One of my long time bug bears with MapGuide is the problematic GDAL Raster Support.

BTW, I am proud to announce some further funding from my company for Trevors GDAL Initative, anyone else care to chip in towards making reliable free raster support for MapGuide a reality?

Shameless Plug Plug, Hint Hint :)

Autodesk Sponsors MapGuide LiveDVD Project

As part of its ongoing commitment to the open source community, Autodesk has
subcontracted OTX Systems to place MapGuide Open Source on the OSGeo LiveDVD 4.0
in preparation for FOSS4G 2010. Including MapGuide on LiveDVD 4.0 will make
MapGuide more accessible to individuals interested in Web GIS technologies.

The LiveDVD project also includes Ubuntu packaging for MapGuide, Maestro,
and a subset of FDO Providers. The entire package set will be available on the OSGeo
downloads site with corresponding installation scripts. This will make MapGuide,
Maestro, and FDO easily accessible to the Ubuntu GIS community.


______________________________

_________________
mapguide-announce mailing list
mapguide-announce@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapguide-announce

MapGuide Openstreetmap Sample Project

I have created a new google code project to develop a sample
map (MGP) for MapGuide using OpenStreetMap Data

http://code.google.com/p/mapguide-osm

Who's up for helping on this project?

Mapguide User Survey Closed - Firstly Comments

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?

New expanded Where to Eat and Where to Stay sections covering all of Australia

We just released an update to the Explore Australia online Travel Guide,
featuring brand new detailed Where to Stay and Where to Go Sections

A few examples:

Byron Bay, NSW - Where to Stay

Broome, WA - Where to Eat

Happy Travels!

MapGuide User Survey

I have posted a short MapGuide user Survey

Mapguide 2.1 final windows build

Jason Birch announced the release of the Final 2.1 candidate installer for Windows

http://download.osgeo.org/mapguide/releases/2.1.0/MapGuideOpenSource-2.1.0.4283-Final.exe

2.1 Release Notes

This is a really solid release which resolves a lot of issues and should
make the MapGuide experience even better, it's focus was

• Performance, scalability, stability
• Better and more informative error messages

I have been using early builds of this for quite a while in production
and it's much more stable the previous releases.

If your using an earlier release, I would highly recommend trying out this
new release.

Raster support now works out of the box and supports raster reprojection.

Road labelling has had a number of useful improvements as well

The Fusion Map Viewer has had a major rewrite and is much faster and improved

On the Linux side, the build is still somewhat troublesome and we are
looking for help on implementing CMake and supporting Ubuntu.

This release has taken quite a while to get out the door, I blogged about
some of the new features in 2.1 back in Jan.

and don't forget MapGuide Central!

A must see presentation about the business of software

Just a quick post, Paul Ramsey made a brilliant presentation at FOSS4G 2009 Keynote

If you work in the software industry, you should really watch this...

FOSS4G was really an amazing conference

Mapguide Central has moved

new url is http://mapguide-central.ennoble.com.au/