I have been researching the best practices with tile servers and how to integrate real cartographic analysis into tile based RIA applications. The results are very interesting with respect to several limitations and also quality.
Tile based RIA applications are becoming more prevalent in the web community because of their responsiveness and flexibility. The current implementations are based on simple APIs, this is excellent for rapid prototyping and creating a site quickly. But it also limits the application when it comes to real data analysis.
In the February MapXtreme Users Group (MUG) we discuss how PBBI products can act as a tile provider and data analysis engine for tile base RIA applications. The talk goes into some of the details and limitations of the current MashUp type RIA application and describes a more complete architecture that allows complex data analysis and how to produce better cartographic maps. Check out the recorded session as well as other MapXtreme recorded sessions and slides at:
http://www.mapinfo.com/mug
The code and description of the basic architecture are available for download at the PBBI Code Exchange:
http://www.mapinfo.com/for-developers/code-exchange
Coming up in April will be a session on the new MapXtreme Java sdk. This all new version of MapXtreme Java will support a table model and MI SQL for data queries and analysis.
We hope to see you there.
Two weeks ago I attended Microsoft’s Platform Strategic Review. Its an intensive 2 day session where the key architects of Microsoft present their short and long term plans at a platform level to an invited audience under strict NDA. There were several highlights but for me the most important realisation was the sheer scope of Azure. Cloud computing is much in the press and as Microsoft points out, there are probably as many definitions as there are implementations. Perhaps more. Microsoft defines cloud computing by example rather than in words. That seems to me to be smart since it allows them latitude in just how far the Azure umbrella stretches.
Azure is a massive undertaking that Microsoft is betting heavily on. It is my considered opinion that cloud computing is the single most important factor in software this year. And I think Microsoft’s bid for ascendency in this space is likely to overwhelm many of the lesser players. NDA rules prevent disclosure here of the scope but its massive.
Azure’s integration with Microsoft’s platforms is impressive but as yet incomplete. Hyper-V would I think be a fairly obvious integration platform as would Windows 7 itself. As always, Visual Studio is efficiently and elegantly integrated.
Speaking of Hyper-V, there was a demo that I thought was really impressive. So imagine a video running in a loop from a virtual machine. Now from the control console of Hyper-V, we move that VM from one machine in our cluster to another (not copy). And the video is perfectly smooth through that move. Imagine being able to deliver applications to a customer this way !
