PgMap and QMap — Direct Connect to PostGIS and SQL Server Spatial

August 11, 2011 Leave a Comment

So the big news out of the Esri UC was direct connect to spatial databases at 10.1.  Sounds full of awesome.  Oh but wait, what about the 99.999999% of us not on 10.1?  How do we direct connect without SDE?  Bill Dollins looked at PgMap when ZigGIS was closed.  Says Bill:

I think PgMap is an impressive tool that should be able to support the needs of ArcGIS 9.x and 10.0 users going forward. It’s good to know that a tool is out there to continue meeting that demand.

Clearly those wanting to direct connect to spatial databases without SDE using today’s releases of ArcGIS need to use PgMap or QMap.  The fact they integrate directly into ArcGIS Desktop workflows means that you can use them and quickly get working on PostGIS or SQL Server Spatial quickly.  What are you afraid of?!?!!

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FME Webinar: Practical Techniques for Loading Data into SQL Server

December 9, 2010 3 Comments

Ed Katibah says that there will be a Webinar next week on loading data into SQL Server Spatial.

One of the most often asked questions about SQL Server Spatial is “How do I load data into the spatial types?”. Safe Software has long provided solutions for this dilemma with their excellent ETL tool, Feature Manipulation Engine (FME).  On December 14th, Safe will be presenting an FME Webinar entitled “Practical Techniques for Loading Data into SQL Server”.

Sounds interesting as Esri doesn’t really give you the right tools to load data into SQL Server Spatial like FME does.

Tis the season for a webinar!

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SQL Azure Now Supports Spatial Types

June 29, 2010 Leave a Comment

Some good news out of Microsoft last week, SQL Azure now supports spatial types:

Spatial Data Support – SQL Azure now offers support for the Geography and Geometry types as well as spatial query support via T-SQL. This is a significant feature and now opens the Windows Azure Platform to support spatial and location aware applications.

Brilliant if you ask me!

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Spatial Database in the Cloud

March 22, 2010 7 Comments

Ed Katibah has a [great post](http://blogs.msdn.com/edkatibah/archive/2010/03/21/spatial-data-support-coming-to-sql-azure.aspx) on something that should get geo-developers excited. Microsoft announced that they will be adding support for spatial data in SQL Azure very soon. Says Ed,

>I’ve been using SQL Azure with spatial support for a couple of weeks now and it works just like the spatial data support in SQL Server 2008 – same spatial data types, spatial methods and spatial indexes. It works in SQL Server Management Studio just like you would expect.

Ed notes two issues with using SQL Azure over SQL Server for your data:

1. You need to have a clustered index on the table you are inserting data into.

2. You may need to break your data loads up into chunks to prevent the connection to SQL Azure from timing out. (welcome to the cloud)

The good news is that SQL Azure seems to be a drop in replacement with all our tools. [Says Dale Lutz at Safe, "it just works"](http://twitter.com/DaleAtSafe/status/10846642100). I’m looking forward to talking with the Microsoft folks at the DevSummit to see how we can leverage it.

Here comes the spatial database into the cloud. Get your ducks in a row!

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SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP is out

August 11, 2009 1 Comment

The SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP is out on MSDN and Technet as I write this.  This is much that is new in this CTP, but I think it is best to focus on what is new in Spatial.  Ed Katibah gave us a preview of the new reporting builder back in May.

We provided sneak previews of this functionality at past conferences, including a popular â€œBI Power Hour” demo.  Maps can be very powerful visualizations.  They can consume and visualize geospatial and geometry data directly (as shown by Ed Katibah here), “regular” data, and combine multiple datasets using map layers.  Maps can integrate ESRI shape files, as well as directly integrate with Bing Maps.

Sounds like a pretty powerful platform for visualizing spatial data.  I can’t wait to give it a shot.

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Amazon brings Windows (and SQL Server) to the cloud

October 1, 2008 5 Comments

The Amazon Web Services Blog says that Amazon will be bringing Microsoft Windows to EC2 this fall.

The 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows Server will be available and will be able to use all existing EC2 features such as Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and the Elastic Block Store. You’ll be able to call any of the other Amazon Web Services from your application. You will, for example, be able to use the Amazon Simple Queue Service to glue cross-platform applications together.

This is on the heels of the Oracle/Amazon EC2 release from a couple weeks ago.  Now that the tools are here, we’ll have to see how well they are adopted by corporate IT administrators who aren’t always open to giving up control of their servers to others.

Mr. Gates saw the value of the cloud early on

Mr. Gates saw the value of the cloud early on

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Microsoft turns the world right side up again

December 27, 2007 12 Comments

Thanks to Paul Ramsey, Bill Dollins, Morten Nielsen and others, Microsoft has said that they plan to implement longitude-latitude ordering in WKB and WKT for both the geography and geometry types. Bill put it best IMO as to why this change needed to happen with SQL Server 2008.

For me, the issue is consistency. Regardless of the mindsets of professionals vs. non-professionals or the imprecision of the OGC spec, the bottom line is that the same call behaves differently for two related data types.

Now sure it would have been possible to work around this, but it makes no sense for Microsoft to do things different from everyone else. Now I still see Microsoft using the GML example of axis order to justify their choice, but given that the standard is long/lat I can’t understand why they’d want to be different.

Now you know why folks such as Howard Butler were “unhappy” that Google named their blog Google LatLong rather than the more correct Google LongLat.


Man, this place looks expensive. I feel like I’m wasting a fortune just standing here.

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ESRI to Support SQL Server 2008 Spatial

December 6, 2007 58 Comments

Good news for those who want to take advantage of SQL Server 2008 Spatial and ArcGIS.

ESRI’s ArcGIS 9.3 software, the next scheduled release of ESRI’s ArcGIS suite, will take full advantage of the new spatial technology in the upcoming release of SQL Server 2008. With the November SQL Server 2008 community technology preview (CTP), Microsoft Corporation is extending the use and value of spatial technology by integrating it directly within SQL Server at no additional cost.

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MapDotNet Support for SQL Server 2008 Spatial

November 12, 2007 5 Comments

I’m sure many of us on the MapDotNet email list got the news that full support for SQL Server 2008 Spatial is right around the corner.

MapDotNet Server 6.5 is currently undergoing beta testing and will be released in November 2007. In addition to support for SQL Server 2008, it will provide support for the new features in Microsoft Virtual Earth 6.0, and will include upgraded map rendering capabilities, support for Windows Communication Foundation, profiling, event logging, and improved diagnostics.

Was there some sort of planned “event” for SQL Server 2008 today because both Manifold and Safe Software also announced SQL Server 2008 Spatial support.

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