Another use of OpenStreetMap within Smallworld

Up until today, I was aware of only two Smallworld-based products that incorporate OpenStreetMap (aka OSM. see http://www.openstreetmap.org) data into a Smallworld application:

1. iFactor Consulting's (my employer) Web Maps Connector; and
2. another company working on OSM to be released soon.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see an announcement from SEPM today that one of the recent products they have released is SEPM X-Database "Open Street Map". You can read more about the product by downloading SEPM_2010_02_New_Features.pdf and browsing to page 20.

At the Smallworld Americas Users Conference this year I presented on OpenStreetMap integration with Smallworld (download presentation here). I presented heavily on using tile based OSM rendering in Smallworld together with downloading vector data on demand. I also mentioned other approaches such as setting up your own server or downloading OSM data into a VMDS partition. Now it seems that SEPM has taken that latter approach and is presenting OSM in VMDS. Clearly there are advantages/disadvantages to the different approaches (e.g., fetching tiles via a web service vs. having all the OSM data in VMDS). But the beautiful thing of having different options is that you can pick the one that fits yours needs best. And the OSM price is not one to be argued with :)

Now if we can just get SEPM to put a video up on YouTube demoing this product...