Development: Web Mapping Enabling Technology - Are Flash and Silverlight dead?

This is the 4th post in the Web Mapping series examining the technology that will change the boundaries of what is possible for geospatial applications. In this post we will take a look at Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight as technology enablers for Web Mapping. The post will illustrate concerns over the future of these technologies, examine their adoption for GIS and Web Mapping and review the direction of the key technology vendors.

Technology: 3D GIS Moving from Desktop to the Web?

In the recent Web Mapping post series Georelated.com examined the new opportunities that have emerged for vastly improved web mapping through HTML 5 and its support for SVG, WebGL, Canvas and massively improved performance. We examined the practicality and benefits of vector web mapping as an alternative to web mapping using pregenerated tile images and the potential of globe web mapping visualisation without plugins or desktop software. In this post we will examine the opportunities for 3D web mapping created through advances in browser technology, HTML5, WebGL and new evolutions in web mapping.

Technology: The rise of Globe in Web Mapping

In the last post "The Fall of the Tiled Map Image" Georelated.com provided some background on why we believe web mapping is on the cusp of a new generation moving away from the image tile map to vector mapping. In this post we will examine the potential of HTML 5 Globe Web Mapping and the changes in technology that make this possible.

Development: The Fall of the Tiled Map Image

Pregenerated tiled map images as used by Google Maps, Microsoft Bing and many GIS focused vendors has been the dominant solution GIS web mapping for solutions for many years. Pregenerated tile maps were a clever and highly successful solution to the technology limitations of the time (circa 2004) however, these limitations no longer exist. Is it time for a change of approach?

Technology: PostGIS v2.0 a game changer?

PostGIS for PostGres

For many years there has been a limited choice of geodatabases when looking for a single solution for all geodata models. Only Oracle Spatial and ESRI offered comprehensive coverage of spatial models. Oracle Spatial provided database models and algs for vector, network, raster and topology in addition to the usual database refinements and in database geocoding. ESRI offered ArcGIS Server with comprehensive support for Vector, Network and Raster models but left topology to the clients and had no offering for geocoding.Competitors such as PostGIS, MapInfo Spatialware, Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL only offered support for vectors.

It seems the status quo may be about to change....