Yeah,
MapObjects from esri is nice :) Honestly its "object diagram" is the only diagram I plotted and put on my wall.
Its all events-methods doesn't work as they claimed (obviously VFP wasn't a target when they created the OCX) but still good :) Implementation of samples to VFP is not hard (especialy Delphi ones). VFP samples directory is simply empty.
Mapobjects use .shp files + ordinary dbaseIII files. White papers from esri give detailed info about shp files which hold shape info but generally they're generated files with utilities such as "MIF2Shape". Also MO directly can use ArcInfo files :)(sure would do when ArcInfo is the greatest product of Esri).
Only challenging problem we have is its price :( Cost starts from 1000+$. There is a 30 day evaluation version at their site.
Cetin
>Randy,
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>have a look at www.esri.com. They are the marketleader for GIS software, a very informative site, a lot of white papers. They have activex controls for mapping, I haven't found the time to test them with vfp, but I hope in near future .... Their products use xBase type files for the GIS data. They also have a product to use it over the web, really great, on the website are links to a lot of other resources, including online demos.
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>Contact me if you have any further questions.
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>>As part of a new project, I'm going to be including "location" fields for a few entities. In the future, I can see some benefits in including GIS functionality in this application.
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>>Does anyone know any good references on this subject? I'm interested in ascertaining the field types I would want to use to capture location information in a manner compatable with GIS.
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>>As a further topic, I would want to possibly tie in this data to some mapping software or service that would allow me to render mapping information in a web-based application driven by VFP (probably using Web Connection, but that shouldn't matter). I know I've seen several Internet sites that offer some links to maps (most of this has been pretty unimpressive). I'm wondering if this is based on GIS data, and whether they are using some mapping software with an API or COM interface, or if it's a hosting service that renders these maps.
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>>Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
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>>-- Randy