MapInfo Manager in development – INSPIRE – OGC CSW

Published on 15/04/2010 in Location Intelligence and MapInfo Professional. 5 Comments

The INSPIRE directive is a major driving force for the management and publishing of metadata for spatial information. Because it affects many of our customers in the public sector it also affects our development of new solutions. Our working title for the solutions we develop for managing metadata is MapInfo Manager.

On the server side, we will support the CSW, the default directory from the OGC, which is a cornerstone of the publication of metadata. We also develop a client to manage metadata, i.e. defining which fields should be and who gets to update what. It should also support import and export of metadata, and the ability to fill in as much as possible automatically – which in English is called data harvesting. We have come a long way with the development of MapInfo Manager, both on the server side and the administration. Expected launch is now in June 2010.

For those who work with MapInfo Professional or MapInfo web client Stratus it will then be easy to connect to one or more CSW servers and search metadata. If it is publicly available data sets then it may result in an address of a WMS service, otherwise you get hopefully at least contact information to purchase the data that has been found. The prototype of the client for MapInfo Professional is available for internal testing, so here is a first appetizer although we probably can expect changes before the first edition in June:

CatalogUtility

5 Responses to “MapInfo Manager in development – INSPIRE – OGC CSW”

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  • Shaun
    13/09/2010 at 03:38

    So why is pbbi making a second metadata product when they already own compass metadata suite? Seams like a complete waste of company resources…

  • Tom Probert
    26/09/2010 at 21:37

    Thanks for taking the time to comment.

    It is a reasonable question but there are significant differences between Compass and MapInfo Manager. MapInfo Manager is going to be part of a fully integrated suite of enterprise Location Intelligence products (or GIS, if you prefer). While the first capabilities we are exposing in MapInfo Manager are related to metadata, it will evolve to go beyond simple metadata management to the general management of your spatial data. This would include deploying data servers of all types, for example WMS, WFS and Tile servers. Compass has not been envisioned to play a role such as this. There are other technical details “behind the scenes” relating to architecture and capabilities that give reason to building a new product. Simply put, Compass could not easily evolve to where we need MapInfo Manager to be.

    I can also tell you we don’t have time and resources to waste! Some of the people involved with Compass are on the team building MapInfo Manager.

    Thanks and regards, Tom Probert, EMEA Desktop Product Marketing Manager

  • Alex
    09/10/2010 at 11:07

    I hear the expected release date will now be Jan/Feb 2011.
    Will this be equivalent to ArcSDE / ArcGIS server in terms of managing data and WMS/WFS services? Or will it just be the metadata component for the first release? I agree with Shauns comment. We already use compass for metadata. Will MapInfo Manager replace Compass?

    Regards

    Alex

  • Tom Probert
    11/10/2010 at 08:18

    Hello Alex,
    The first commercial release is currently scheduled for Jan/Feb 2011 as you have heard. I wouldn’t say that this will be equivalent to ArcSDE as we will not be doing things like requiring you to use it to access Oracle. (At PBBI we have always preferred allowing our customers to work directly with their database.) We expect the first release of MapInfo Manager to have more than just the metadata capture and CSW catalogs. The plans call for easy setup and configuration of Web Map Servers. WFS is also on the road map for later in 2011.

    Long term MapInfo Manager might replace Compass but we are rather thinking now about how the two might be integrated.

    Regards
    Tom Probert
    EMEA Desktop Product Marketing Manager

    P.S. Caveat. I have to offer the usual disclaimer that our road map plans can (and often do) change.

  • Frank
    11/10/2011 at 15:15

    Hi,

    INSPIRE is a totally new thing for me. Just from a developers point of view: If I’d like to offer my customers an IT-infrastructure so that they can offer WMS and WFS to the public (both WMS and WFS have to be conform with INSPIRE requirements), then which products from Pitney Bowes are currently able to fulfill these requirements? Are there any today or are they still under development?
    For example: Does MapXtreme fulfill these reqirements?

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