News Letter: January - March 2009
Spatial Technology (UK) in cooperation with Spatial Technology AB
Greetings
Here’s hoping that we all have a fruitful and fulfilling year. I won’t wish you an interesting year because we all know about the ‘Chinese Curse’ and in any case we are already living in interesting times!
It is certainly an interesting environment in which to be selling, especially with budgets being cut and local authorities having their assets frozen in Iceland (I knew it when it was called Bejams).
If you are looking to ‘Invest to Save’ the message that we are propagating has never been so important. Whether it’s centralised data, the use of Open Source software or using the web to roll out GIS to a wider spectrum of users, we have a convincing story to tell.
GIS, correctly implemented, is proven to deliver major savings. Even professional users are unlikely to make full use of their existing licensed GIS software so a web based alternative can deliver real savings, a simple message to get across to senior management in these cost conscious times.
On a final, more cheery and positive note, we will be very pleased to assist you with using up any budget that you happen to have unused this quarter!!
Contents
View from the SpT Office across Gothenburg.
In November we visited the team at Spatial Technology in Sweden to find out about the next releases of ISM and ISM Web as well as to meet the team in Gothenburg The office was down on numbers as some of the team are currently working offsite, implementing a major system for the Dubai Road Transport Authority. Highlights of their trip include a visit to Dubai’s new indoor Ski Centre!
Whilst we were there we took the opportunity to drive across the new Oresund Bridge into Denmark to meet the team from Grontmij Carlbro who develop ISM Web.
R-L: Thomas Olsson, Patrick Mollbrink of Spatial Technology AB together with Ian and Chris outside the Grontmij¦ Carlbro Offices in Copenhagen)
The next release of ISM (2.8) is due in February, it’s mainly concerned with the integration of GI Web Technologies, especially with a full integration of ISM and ISM Web so that they are both controlled by a single administration module. Here are some more of the new features:
New enhanced data source and metadata management
- New data sources for WMS/WFS Set up WMS directly from ISM Admin for all clients
- Enhanced search engine enabling multiple column conditions
- Oracle Role management
- An extensively enhanced ISM Administration Module (ISM ADM) with a graphical viewer and WMS & WFS support
- Full support for geodetic and non-geodetic coordinate system including support for Lat/Long conversions of distance and buffer inputs and EPSG coordinate system support.
- Integrated History & Version management
- ISM ADM management for QA-attribute, AP-tables and History tables
- ISM ADM has the added ability to group users into User Groups and Departments
- Enhanced adapters with additional functionality enabling them to read WMS Services as maps
- Enhanced sequences and ISM trigger functions and management
- Enhanced styling & Open source GIS support
- ISM licence manager
- Enhanced position management
There will be a subsequent release in March with additional functionality:
- New adapters for Geomedia, Autodesk MapGuide, C-Soft, Supermap
- New Easy Loaders; .SHP, .DGN, .DWG
- A new module - ISM Workflow
‘Server based software like ISM Web can probably help contribute to saving the planet by reducing energy usage’
Computers and particularly server centres use around 7% of the total electricity generated worldwide. Most of this is actually used for cooling the systems as CPUs and memory use very little power.
To reduce the energy used for cooling companies are starting to set up server centres in the very cold parts of the world, like Alaska, Icelandic countries and the far north of Europe. In these areas, cooling server centres can be as simple as opening a window to let cool air in, thereby significantly reducing the overall energy used. Furthermore some of these places have access to geothermic energy from hot volcanic springs etc. So, they will have a very low energy requirement for the equipment, plus an environmentally friendly source of power.
To exploit this we need to have high quality software that can run on remote servers accessible via the internet, i.e. web servers and web based software. This is where ISM Web comes in.
Being web based it only requires a relatively low power workstation for access as it runs entirely in a web browser, so more opportunity for energy savings by using lower powered workstations, or thin client machines.
If you start to deploy this kind of technology now, you will be ready to move your data to the Arctic server farms when they come online. This will significantly reduce the IT carbon footprint of most organisations.
For more information on any of our products or services please visit:
www.spatialtech.co.uk
or e-mail us at:
solutions@spatialtech.co.uk
The next release of ISM Web (2.5) will be out in mid-February… a Valentine’s Day present for your users? It builds upon the existing very comprehensive functionality. Here are some of the new features:
- Improved quality of rendering – higher resolution on maps
- Rotated PDF print – rotate the map before printing
- Asynchronous execution of spatial queries, which can be aborted by the user. If you start a spatial query and change your mind it can be stopped before it finishes.
- Improved spatial queries with buffer zones and targeted selection.
- Extended redline and workspace functionality with circles and the ability to choose the colours
- Mouse wheel zoom
- UTF-8 support (Updated Unicode for easy translation)
- The Data Capture and Edit (DCE) module will be available in English (or as near to English as Chris, being from up t’North can manage!)
Here is your chance to use up any spare budget. We have produced an inexpensive tool to load, optimise and to search the NLPG providing a map of the chosen location.
This application can be either stand-alone for single user access to the NLPG or it can be Intranet based allowing all your users to access ‘out of area’ addresses. There are differently priced options depending on how much money you need to use up!
A lot of time and energy has gone into the development of the NLPG, now there’s an opportunity to use it for search queries beyond your boundaries and to save money by removing any unnecessary and expensive AddressPoint Licences.
We have developed an extension of ISM Web that allows access to map and address data using a GPRS or 3G enabled Windows Mobile device.
This enables your remote working teams to have access to address checking and UK wide mapping through a simple hand-held device that requires no data to be held locally, removing the need for expensive and complicated data synchronization. This module, linked to ISM, enables the communication of operational data to and from the field in real time.
We have developed an interface that allows ISM Web to seamlessly link to MetaCarta. The MetaCarta Corporation is a world leader in the geo-tagging of documents as well as RSS feeds
MetaCarta is used to identify and leverage the geographic references in documents within your organization e.g. show me on the map all documents with references to Camden. see:
www.metacarta.com
- Geosearch: Find all content, data, and information about a place in a single view
- Geotagging: Analyze content to identify geographic references
- MetaCarta puts your content on any map: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, ESRI - virtually any map server
With
ISM Web Information you can create a true information portal for your organization that allows access, under control, to all information through a single, easy to use, GIS enabled web interface.
