Monday, September 14. 2009

NZ's Second Biggest Power Company Removes Oracle, Goes SQL Server

New Zealand’s Powerco pretty much removed its Oracle instances in favor of Microsoft’s SQL Server. There were also changes in hardware, virtualization and a drop in the number of Citrix servers. The GIS moves over this week; hopefully after a user presentation at Tech Ed, we'll learn more about how the company was using Oracle and how it'll be using SQL Server for spatial data (or not). The company uses Televent Miner and Miner apps built on ESRI tech (source). The money saved: $390,000 a year.

Open source was not considered as the goal was to standardize to one system from a mixed Oracle/SQL Server solution.

- Computerworld NZ

Tuesday, September 8. 2009

TechCrunch Explores Online Maps Response to Bay Bridge Closure

TechCrunch give Google the win - it rerouted and said why. Yahoo rerouted by didn't say why. Bing didn't by default know of the closure.

I live in Boston and the closure - and its extension - has been the on the national news all weekend. It also got lots of play on San Fran based Buzz Out Loud on Friday.

Tuesday, August 25. 2009

Microsoft's Popfly Shuts Down

Like much of the rest of the world I didn't realize the shutdown occurred yesterday. But I noticed today. I was reviewing next week's lesson for my students where I reference the customization power of both Yahoo Pipes and Microsoft's Popfly. That's where I found the notice that it was no longer available. A more complete explanation was made on July 16 on the Popfly blog.

Pipes and Popfly are visual development tools aimed, for the most part, at non-programmers.

I'm pleased Yahoo Pipes is still with us. But, the fact that Popfly never made it out of beta gives me pause. Why did Popfly not make it? More broadly, why are these very powerful visual modeling tools not more popular? I know that Safe's Workbench, the first one of these I ever saw, IS well used within its user base. (I even used it fairly effectively as a complete newbie at the FME User Conference.) I wonder about ESRI's ModelBuilder. I like to think it's used, but don't hear much about it or about people sharing models.

Are these types of metaphors just not that useful? Is there really no audience for programming between casual or heavy duty that would use such interfaces? Are they too complex to use?

Bing Maps via WMS

Jeff Harrison at The Carbon Project let me know about a new beta offering from On Terra Systems that makes Bing Maps data available via a WMS. You can join the beta and test it out for free.

Monday, August 24. 2009

Yelp Mobile: Bing Maps on Blackberry, GMaps on iPhone

TechCrunch notes the launch of the Yelp Blackberry app (Yelp is a restaurant review service) and the difference in map platform. So, why go Bing when Google was used for the previous app on the other platform?

Per the article: "Yelp says that Bing was used because the search engine provided map tile access, which was essential for movable maps on the app."

Tuesday, August 11. 2009

SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP - with more maps

There's a lot that's new and available to all tomorrow in a Community Tech Preview (CTP) but one aspect is a new release of Report Builder (3.0). It offers charts and gages and supports "geospatial visualization" which the blog posts explains means "maps." The actual release is expected in the first half of 2010.

- Data Platform Insider/SQL Server News Blog