The TatukGIS Editor is a programmable, general purpose desktop GIS mapping and data editing application featuring support for dozens of vector, image, grid, and SQL database formats, on-the-fly map reprojection with nearly 3,000 pre-defined coordinate systems, compatibility with leading database engines, GPS connectivity… For power users with specialized or advanced requirements, a built-in scripting IDE provides the means to customize or extend the product beyond its core features.

TatukGIS Viewer is a free, slimmed down version of the Editor product, without features for creating/editing data and for customization with scripts. The feature list for the Editor and free Viewer products is presented in the Feature Matrix.

Viewing: The Editor and Viewer open most GIS/CAD vector map files, raster maps, aerial images, grid data, and SQL database layers such as Oracle Spatial or PostGIS coverages. Both products can open TatukGIS projects and most ESRI ArcView v.3 or MapInfo Professional projects and projects exported from ESRI ArcGIS/ArcMap using the free Arc2TatukGIS plug-in. Each data type is supported “natively’, so there is no need to import data into any internal format. Comprehensive visual layer property and legend controls provide for deep customization of the appearance of each map layer, thematic mapping, layer hierarchies, legend presentation, scale… The Editor and Viewer support advanced query and selection features, including SQL Query Builder.

Coordinate systems: The Editor and Viewer support nearly 3,000 pre-defined map coordinate systems in use around the world (including all the U.S. State Planes), user-defined coordinate systems based on 120 supported projections, automatic layer coordinate system recognition and on-the-fly conversion of vector and raster layers from multiple coordinate systems for display as a single map.  The support reflects EPSG codes and OpenGIS WKT coordinate system definitions. The Editor can export map data to any selected coordinate system.

Editing: The Editor contains features to create, edit, save, and import/export GIS map files and import/export attribute data between vector map layers and external databases. The Editor can be used as a conversion tool to translate map layers between supported file types and/or coordinate systems. Special tools include the topology builder/corrector to systematically clear geometry related errors (overlapping polygons, holes between polygons, missed line intersections, dangling nodes, etc.) from vector line or polygon layers.

Scripting: The Editor is a fully scriptable IDE for writing and debugging code. Using Basic or Pascal scripts, the Editor functionality can be enhanced or modified, including full menu redesign, custom dialog boxes, etc., for end-user custom applications. The scripting engine exposes (inside the Editor) the full power of the TatukGIS Developer Kernel, with its hundreds of classes and thousands of methods, to fulfill the requirements of any kind of GIS application. Dozens of example scripts are provided, e.g., to perform Google or Bing maps integration, GPS tracking on a projected map, batch (command line) conversions between coordinate systems, and various tutorial examples. The special features or customizations can be distributed (deployed) to other Editor licensed users just by sharing the scripts.

Databases: The Editor is compatible with leading database engines, e.g., MSSQL Server, MSJET, Oracle, DB2, Interbase, PostgreSQL and most 3rd party SQL database map layer formats, e.g., MSSQL 2008 Spatial, ESRI ArcSDE, ESRI ArcSDE Raster, ESRI Personal Geodatabase, MapInfo SpatialWare, Oracle Spatial/Locator, Oracle GeoRaster, Geomedia SQL Server, PostGIS, OpenGIS Simple Features, etc. The Editor supports live joins of vector map layers to external database tables, as well as data import/export with external databases.

FME, have you heard about it? Chances are if you work with spatial data on a daily basis then you may be familiar with the product. If not, then you should be! Simply put, Safe Software’s FME is a spatial ETL platform that provides a complete data access solution for reading, writing and transforming spatial data. To the casual user FME is a data translation utility – and even better, one that is available as a free, fully functional time-stamped evaluation copy. However, it’s actually much more than that.

Introduced in 1993, FME is one of only a handful of data conversion tools that can preserve all the information content of the source data by allowing restructuring of the underlying data model during the data translation. And it stands alone as the only complete tool that can manage both vector and raster datasets. Data can be imported or exported between hundreds of supported formats, with complete control over the data restructuring – including geometric and attribute operations, and coordinate conversion. With this advanced data handling capability, FME opens the door to a host of data transformation possibilities for spatial data.

So what exactly can you accomplish with FME? The following list describes the main functions that a typical user can access by using some or all of the utilities bundled in the latest product offering.

Translate – FME Universal Translator: Quickly and easily perform basic translations using the supplied defaults, or, if you’re an advanced user, perform more sophisticated processing by creating and running your own mapping files. FME supports conversions between over 190 CAD, GIS, raster and database formats. More than 30 raster file types are supported, including MrSID, GeoTIFF, ECW, ERDAS IMAGINE, and JPEG 2000. A complete list of supported formats is available at www.safe.com/formats.

Transform – FME Workbench: Completely control your data translation and transformation tasks by graphically adjusting the way your data flows from its source to the destination. And the Workbench interface gets full marks for usability. Simply drag-and-drop prepackaged transformation processes or “transformers” onto a workspace to create your data transformation workflow. Linking these transformers together in inventive ways creates the workflow you need to streamline any number of routine data manipulation chores. Common tasks that can be fast-tracked with FME include combining data sources, testing data quality, renaming and recalculating attributes, joining attributes stored in a database to map features, and building feature geometry from disconnected point or linework.

View – FME Universal Viewer: View multiple datasets before, after and even during a translation. Examine features, identify attributes and values, and enhance the display using color, symbols and labeling.

Integrate – Combine data from multiple sources into a single translation run, regardless of the source data’s format or structure.

Convert – Coordinate Conversion Support: Choose from a gallery containing thousands of coordinate systems based on a variety of different projections, ellipsoids, and datums. You can also define your own coordinate system.

Embed – FME Objects: Add FME functionality to applications that you develop.

Use – FME Application Extenders: Use FME directly in your own GIS to import or publish dozens of additional formats. FME supports products provided by Autodesk, ESRI, Informatica, Intergraph, Microsoft and Smallworld.

Extend – FME Plug-in SDK: Add your own formats or processing facilities to the FME translation core.

Deliver – FME SpatialDirect: Sitting atop the FME Server, FME SpatialDirect employs the full transformation capability of FME to deliver data via the web. Data is delivered in the format and projection requested by the end user from a standard web browser.

If you’d like to try out FME’s capabilities for yourself, you can download a free evaluation copy from www.safe.com/evaluation.

FME Users at-a-Glance

So who’s using FME? That’s no simple answer as the user-base is rather exhausting, however, here are two success stories from some noteworthy users of FME.

Talisman Energy
Talisman Energy must obtain oil and gas exploration permits from many different provincial, state, and federal regulatory agencies across North America. These agencies use a variety of survey systems to divide up public lands within their jurisdiction. Land tenure is assigned via a sealed-bid auction, with each regulatory agency conducting land auctions at different intervals. In some regions, land auctions are held as frequently as every two weeks.

Since new oil and gas exploration tenure agreements are issued almost continually across North America, Talisman Energy’s Exploration Technology Department needed to create processes that would rapidly generate current tenure maps. The department required a solution that would join Talisman’s internal tenure data to publicly available spatial data from various jurisdictions, and be flexible enough to accommodate the many systems of land division.

Talisman configured Safe Software’s FME spatial data manipulation technology to create new map features representing current tenure tracts. FME extracted information for current leases from an Oracle database and joined this data to pre-existing polygon map features. Once the basic data transformation workflow had been created, only minor changes were required to apply the transformation to systems of land division.

FME enables Talisman to rapidly generate up-to-date digital maps of constantly changing oil and gas leases. The maps allow Talisman staff to not only view current tenure tracts, but also query details about each tenure parcel. The tool’s flexibility enables Talisman to apply similar methodology to different grid systems employed in different regions, and allows for easy reconfiguration to accommodate new geographic areas, new datasets, or changes to systems of land division.

GeoStor at the Arkansas Geographic Information Office (AGIO)
The Arkansas Geographic Information Offi ce (AGIO) maintains GeoStor – the first statewide, enterprise-class geospatial data warehouse available in the United States. First open to the public in January 2001,GeoStor now stores over four terabytes of raster and vector spatial data covering the 75 counties of Arkansas. GeoStor is built over ESRI ArcSDE® running atop an Oracle 10g database, and offers web-based data search and delivery capability using any standard web browser.

In 2005 the AGIO began designing a new architecture for GeoStor that would incorporate a new data delivery solution. Project specifications required that the new solution work with GeoStor’s Portal Toolkit and ArcIMS map viewer application to: deliver raster as well as vector data via the web, and provide both data types in multiple formats and coordinate systems, as specified by the end user.

After researching the data transformation capability of Safe Software’s FME platform, the AGIO chose Safe Software’s FME SpatialDirect® product, powered by FME 2007, to provide web-based delivery of GeoStor data.

Extended by FME SpatialDirect, GeoStor 5.0 now offers data in up to eight raster formats and sixteen vector formats, and has the flexibility to deliver this data in multiple coordinate systems. FME SpatialDirect also eliminates post-download processing of the data by “clipping” the area specified by the user from a larger map of the state before compressing the file for delivery. The user is provided with exactly the data they need, and is not required to “stitch together” multiple files or extract data from a larger file. The customizable order form interface and translation results page is also provided by FME SpatialDirect. As an additional feature, FME SpatialDirect provides the AGIO with the option to configure GeoStor to act as a Web Feature Server (WFS), and Web Map Server (WMS).

FME SpatialDirect’s ability to handle both raster and vector translations considerably reduced the reconfiguration effort for the AGIO by alleviating the need to work with multiple software products. Another advantage was the ease with which FME SpatialDirect could be configured in terms of scalability and customization. The AGIO has a distributed configuration powered by twelve FME servers, eight of which are dedicated to raster translations. FME SpatialDirect’s load distribution mechanism ensures that requests are sent to the appropriate FME server, and sends the translation request into a queue if all FME servers are busy.

Customization of FME SpatialDirect enabled GeoStor 5 to deliver a metadata file (in XML format) along with the search results. The metadata is updated on the fly, and reflects the extents, coordinate system, and process steps of the data request.

For years geospatial professionals have relied on GeoExpress to manipulate or compress their imagery or both. The improvements in GeoExpress 7 make it almost a whole new animal. Not only did LizardTech add a number of features that make the usual manipulation and compression workflows easier in a lot of little ways – a kind of “something for everyone” approach – but through integration with LizardTech’s other geospatial products GeoExpress has emerged as a command center from which users can easily manage image storage and distribution tasks as well.

Let’s look at some of the improvements and new features. Many of these came from user requests in surveys and interactions with LizardTech Support. Some of them, such as 64-bit support and the addition of ECW (.ecw) files as a supported input format, are not very show-offable. Others, such as the new treatment of reprojection options, new metadata editing tools, and commuter licensing, will make users breathe a contented sigh of relief. And the new interoperability with Spatial Express and Express Server are the final leap in making GeoExpress the go-to interface for geospatial users at every point along their imaging workflow.

Exporting to Spatial Express and Express Server
Along with GeoExpress, Spatial Express and Express Server make up the LizardTech Express Suite. Spatial Express enables users to store MrSID and JPEG 2000 imagery natively (that is, in compressed form) in an Oracle 10gR2 database. Express Server is the fastest and most stable means of distributing MrSID and JPEG 2000 imagery on the Web, via WMS, or in ArcMap. But preparing georaster tables in a database and adding catalogs in Express Server used to be rather complex jobs involving command line tools.

Now users can export imagery to Spatial Express and Express Server with a few clicks in the GeoExpress user interface. Imagery can be exported directly to Spatial Express or Express Server as part of the encode process, or existing imagery can be published without reencoding.

What’s more, a new Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Snap-in application called the Express Server Management Console is included on the installation CD or DVD as an optional install. Users can open and run the Express Server Management Console directly from inside GeoExpress, creating and indexing catalogs of imagery on any accessible Express Server.

For the first time, all of LizardTech’s geospatial products operate seamlessly together and can be purchased together as the LizardTech GeoExpress Suite.

Commuter Licenses
LizardTech has made licensing GeoExpress even more flexible than before with the addition of “commuter” licenses. This just means that floating licenses, introduced in GeoExpress 6, can now be used off the network. Field personnel and employees that travel can check out a license and work on their laptop whether they are connected to the network or not.

64-Bit Support
Sixty-four-bit support means users can take advantage of 16+ GB of memory in today’s most advanced systems for creating mosaics of imagery terabytes in size.

Reprojection
The reprojection controls were once buried on a remote tab within the Encode Options dialog box; now there’s a button icon  right on the main toolbar. A “Recently Used” drop-down menu has been added that enables users to click instantly on their favorite coordinate reference systems (CRS) instead of having to wade through the list of thousands of supported CRSs each time they need to select one.

ECW Support
Support for ECW files as input means users switching to GeoExpress from other products will have no trouble working with their legacy files.

Support for Generating ESRI AUX Files
To ensure that the metadata in your MrSID and JPEG 2000 imagery will always be read in ESRI applications, the ability to generate ESRI AUX files when encoding has been added.

Support for Cropping by Vector Overlay or GML Coverage
By selecting a vector overlay, such as a shapefile, or a GML coverage, users can crop images according to a complex polygon rather than a simple square. This improvement offers greater flexibility and efficiency in image manipulation.

Despeckling
New in GeoExpress 7 is a set of controls (again with their own button icon on the toolbar) for removing compression artifacts at the edge of images and making mosaics look cleaner.

Improved Metadata Tools
Users can edit custom metadata tags in MrSID and JPEG 2000 imagery and add new ones of their own. This enables them to edit the coordinate system of an image or a set of images without having to reencode them. These custom metadata tags can be used to build robust, flexible Web applications with LizardTech Express Server.

Export to GeoTIFF
GeoExpress 7 enables users to “demosaic” or “tile out” their imagery by specifying a grid, easily decoding all or part of their MrSID or JPEG 2000 image to GeoTIFF directly within GeoExpress. Once again, they don’t need to learn command line tools to do this.

We don’t have space here to do more than call out JPEG 2000 alpha band support and a host of improvements to the GeoExpress user interface that make using this industry favorite just a little more intuitive. We do want to mention that with the release of GeoExpress 7, a portal site has been created on the LizardTech website that enables GeoExpress users to upload imagery to a LizardTech Express Server and preview how easy it is to serve their images in a variety of platforms, including WMS, ArcMap, and Web applications such as Javascript, Flash and Ajax (http://portal.lizardtech.com/).

Enterprise GIS applications continue to grow as a mission-critical tool for businesses and agencies of every size. There is ever increasing pressure for IT/GIS to deliver these systems and applications faster and operate them in a fail-safe environment. Yet the delivery, of these data and applications is dependent upon a complex system of communication between multiple layers of hardware and software across the network. Many times, the IT/GIS managers are the last to know of GIS data and application delivery failure, leading to increased down-time, loss of productivity, lowered confidence in IT/GIS systems and work stoppage.

Reliability is a key criterion of all IT performance including GIS. As organizations increase their reliance on GIS to deliver critical business information the need for GIS performance monitoring also increases.

Fortunately, monitoring software for your spatial enterprise is available to help your IT/GIS department manage GIS systems and services more proactively. XMF Alerter offers 24/7/365 GIS monitoring of ArcIMS and ArcGIS Server map and data services and real-time notification when problems arise.

geoXMF LLC:

geoXMF LLC is a leader in enterprise GIS performance software and services. geoXMF’s industry leading technology integrates with ESRI’s Internet mapping software and is used by a variety of organizations including transportation, agriculture, water and wastewater utilities, power distribution and local/regional governments.

What many internet users don’t know however is that GE in fact offers much more than what can be seen on the surface. By using some of GE’s tools, one can create maps and views with limitless features. One can customize the virtual globe to display anything. Users can add their own imagery, their own GIS files and superimpose them over GE’s own features.

Adding Your Own Images

Users can add their own images into GE and correctly align the image to the earth’s surface by supplying the image’s spatial coordinates. If the image is already georeferenced, the user can obtain the coordinates of the image’s four corners from a GIS program and enter it into the image properties in GE.

Non-georeferenced images (like personal photographs or scanned maps) can be georeferenced by overlaying the photo over Google’s imagery and adjusting the image accordingly (by extending or retracting it)

The image is added into GE as an Image Overlay (Add -Image Overlay). Users may find this tool particularly useful when comparing aerial photography taken throughout the years. Once aligned correctly, users can turn the images on and off to visualize changes in the landscape. The transparency feature can also be used in order to see two images superimposed over one another.

Adding Your Own GIS Files

The world is your oyster, as it were, when it comes to adding external files into GE. Any geospatial file can be added into the program, provided that it is in a format that is readable by GE. Currently, GE only accepts geospatial files in KML (Keyhole Markup Language). Fortunately, there are several free Shapefile-to-KML converters available for download. If your file is not a Shapefile originally, then you can use another program that will convert it to Shapefile. An excellent shapefile-to-KML converter is the Shp2kml which is a stand alone product that allows for the customization of the layer – the user can specify symbols (colours, width), classification field, and labelling preferences. Shp2kml supports Shapefiles in Lat/Long or UTM, in points, lines, and polygons.

In Google Earth, the user adds the KML file by clicking on Add from the File menu.

Shp2kml was used to convert the original building Shapefile to a KML. Symbols and categories were defined and retained during conversion. User selected individual fields to appear in the attribute ‘balloon’.

Connecting to a WMS

Users who do not have interest in, or access to geospatial files, may opt to use GE’s Web Map Service (WMS) client feature to connect to any WMS URL. A WMS allows users to access maps or individual files from any web server that offers it. Users can combine the maps from one or more servers as well as use it with GE’s imagery. Types of information available from WMS can include geology, population, topography, weather, imagery and more.

A connection to a WMS is established in GE from the Add menu. Clicking on Image Overlay – Refresh – and on WMS Parameters. The user can select from the list that is readily available, or the user can Add a WMS URL to connect to a specific service s/he is interested in.

Google Earth can be used as a map viewer using and manipulating external geospatial files. Users can combine their own data with Google’s, or opt to display their data alone. The kinds of information that one can display in GE is limitless, and hence serving the needs of both GIS-savvy and non-GIS users.