Smallworld Welcome To 2013

I recently saw a tweet welcoming Smallworld-using utilities to 2007...

Welcome to 2007, utilities. Google, GE Join Forces in Energy Sector Mapping Tool energy.aol.com/2013/02/27/goo…
— Helen Fairman (@helen_fairman) February 28, 2013

... while it may be true that the GE/Google announcement brings back memories of 2007, it is also true that Smallworld users have had the option of accessing web maps since at least 2009. You can see many examples of that here and here.

The web mapping world has changed a lot since 2007.  In my opinion, one of the cooler web mapping options involves MapBox.  I have blogged about them here.  MapBox provides a way for users to quickly create beautiful maps and host them on MapBox infrastructure.  You have access to pre-packaged Terrain, Satellite and Road layers that you can then customize to your style and visibility requirements.  In addition, you can create your own map layers and upload them to MapBox.

The following video clip demonstrates Smallworld access to MapBox maps with a specific example around styling your own contour lines and hillshading to integrate with your asset data layers.


While having Smallworld access Google map layers may seem "last decade", it definitely still has its value.  Extending Smallworld even more to access powerful platforms like MapBox solidly moves Smallworld users from 2007 into 2013.

Welcome to the future!  You can find out more about Smallworld web maps integrations here.

Exporting Smallworld Data to KML

There was a recent question on the sw-gis Yahoo group asking about how to export a Smallworld trail to KML for use in other applications. It turns out that can be done easily using the open source Magik Components Library (mclib). The following video demonstrates how this is done. Important information:
- Magik Components Library link is here
- Thanks to Brad Sileo (iFactor Consulting) for contributing this code to the MCLIB project.



Give it a try and let me know what kind of cool export applications you are using. And if you have any improvements to make to the functionality, please feel free to contribute to MCLIB.

Embedding Interactivity in a Static Paper Map

If you have ever traveled through an airport or read a magazine in the last year, you are likely to have seen a QR Code.

Here's a QR code with my contact info. (I'll see if I can fit it on my name badge at the upcoming Smallworld Users Conference)


A QR Code is a 2D scannable image that can have content associated with it (e.g., URL, text, contact info, location, etc). It turns out that most mobile devices and smart phones now have either built-in capability to read these codes or their respective application stores/markets provide a host of QR Reader apps. It is being used a lot by product marketers to allow people to launch an interactive and immersive experience simply by pointing their smartphone camera at a magazine page or a billboard.

I have begun to think about how we could start integrating interactive experiences in utilities' paper maps. While it is true that many utilities are moving to mobile apps for data access, I know that there are still many paper maps being generated. I also know that smart phones are becoming more prevalent throughout society and that means that smart phones are also finding their way to field crews.

So, if a field crew has paper maps and they also have smart phones, what kind of interactivity can we add to paper maps. Right away I can think of things like adding attribute information or geolocation to paper maps. I am sure that there are many other applications and that is why I am posting about this technology. I would love to hear from the community about other ideas concerning how to add interactivity to the old paper maps.

The following video shows a demonstration of how a simple paper map was endowed with dynamic content.



I would enjoy discussing this more with any attending the Smallworld Users Conference (http://www.kinsleymeetings.com/ge/smallworld) in September.

SEPM Launches a YouTube Channel

Robert at SEPM took my suggesting in a recent post seriously enough to create a SEPM YouTube Channel. The first video is up and shows some very cool stuff that he has been working on.

If you are considering creating your own channel, please consider tagging the videos with "swgis". On Twitter you can use the #swgis hashtag.

Designing Simplicity into Smallworld

At the Smallworld America's Users Conference this September in Baltimore, I heard a comment from an attendee that has stuck with me... "Smallworld needs to innovate simplicity into its product". Clearly there are many ways to accomplish this, but I thought I would share one area where I have been able to add some simplicity. I would very much like to hear from others about how they have designed simplicity into Smallworld applications or where they would like to see a simpler design.

Not happy with Magik in Emacs? See the MDT Webinar.

I've written a few posts related to Astec's MDT Eclipse plugin over the years. I have gotten used to using Emacs but I realize that is not for everyone (especially people coming to Magik from other development environments). So I was happy to read that Astec would be hosting a MDT webinar at the beginning of December. The timing of it is aimed at participants in the western hemisphere.

(Maybe Astec can set up a YouTube channel with additional demo videos for those who cannot attend the webinar).

Here's the announcement...

We would like to invite all Magik developers to an online live demo presentation of MDT (Magik Development Tools): the new and modern IDE for Magik.

Session is planned to be held on December, the 2nd, 1 p.m. Washington D.C. time.

MDT live demo presents main MDT features from simple basics to most advanced stuff. Topics included in this demo are as follows:
- creating project, runtime, session;
- importing and exporting (preferences, sessions, products etc.);
- working with code;
- browsing through code;
- managing project dependencies;
- search;
- version control systems;
- debugging

duration: approx. 60 min.

Due to limited number of seats please confirm your interest on mdt@astec.net. If needed, we will hold another session 90 minutes after the first one. Joining details and link will be posted one week prior to the presentation.

Cheers,
MDT Team

Decimal Degrees vs DMS

I had someone ask me today how to configure Smallworld to show Decimal Degrees or Degrees/Minutes/Seconds.

I found two ways. The one way is to use the Administration application's Unit Display Groups tool to change the "Sub Units?" value

The other option is to create some Magik code in your image build process that changes the sub units setting.

E.g.

_block
 unit_manager.unit(:degree).default_format.use_sub_units? << _false # (or _true)
_endblock 
$

Smallworld GeoSpatial Analysis examples

I recently had the good fortune of being able to teach a course on Smallworld GeoSpatial Analysis (GSA). If you haven't seen the product, you really should try to get a demo from your GE Smallworld representative. As the GE documentation states, "Smallworld GeoSpatial Analysis is a new, exciting, and easy to use business intelligence product from GE Energy Services."

During the training, some of my students asked me to put together some videos of use case scenarios that were more relevant to their situation. What follows here are 4 videos (each less than 5 minutes) that I made for them but now make available for everyone to get a quick introduction to some of the possibilities of GSA. In my mind, GSA has many great spatial intelligence features, but these videos touch on only a very few of them.

New Smallworld Twitter Hashtag #swgis

Mark Field at Smallworld GIS Wiki suggests that the Twitter hashtag we use for all things Smallworld be #swgis instead of #sworld. The #swgis tag is shorter and not prone to use in other domains. I heartily agree with his suggestion and will use #swgis going forward.

Smallworld Twitter after the Conference #swuc #sworld

This year was the first year that the Smallworld Users conference was covered by Twitter. The turnout was fairly decent with the likes of @ifactor, @pmbatty, @mweisman, @JEJusticeJR, @mbfbsae90, @SafeSoftware, @cliffhangerSolu, @Fasterre, @aardvark179 and @boulderalf all posting from the conference.

I met an attendee at the conference who was very new to Magik/Smallworld. He mentioned that he had been watching the #swuc tweets to see what to expect leading up to the conference. Because this seems to be fairly new to the #sworld community, he couldn't get a good read on it. I am hopeful that this new communication medium will find its way into the Smallworld community in the next year.

By the way, I have started tweeting about all things Smallworld under the #sworld hashtag. It turns out that #smallworld has alot of other connotations on Twitter but #sworld has not yet been used.

What are advantages of Smallworld #swuc

At the "Smallworld Visibility Forum" today there was a question about "what does Smallworld do well and what doesn't it do well and has that been documented?" I thought that was an worthwhile question and was wondering if you have had exposure to other GIS systems to compare advantages/disadvantages of the systems?

For example...

1. I think wrapping the database records as objects in Magik provides for realistic real-world

modelling.

2. Long transaction support is still an industry leader.

3. External access to VMDS has a performance bottle neck in Magik.

I would love to read your comments pro/con in the comments of this blog. Or you can send me an e-mail directly. If there is a lot of response, I can set up a wiki page at http://www.gesmallworld.org that lists the advantages/disadvantages.

Where was that method or exemplar defined?

Do you ever want to know the source file for a particular method? You can use the class browser to jump to the code or you can do this...

MagikSF> circle.method(:new|()|).source_file
$

Most of the time, jumping to a method is faster in the Class Browser than using this code snippet.

But what if you want to jump to the file where the actual class exemplar (not the method) is defined? Then you can do this...

MagikSF> circle.method(:exemplar).source_file
$

I know of no way to do this latter action from the Class Browser.

WMC Webinar Next Week

http://bit.ly/bu9Iwv

iFactor Consulting (my employer) is putting on a webinar next week featuring the Web Maps Connector. There's some pretty cool stuff in there in terms of integrating Smallworld with outside data sources (landbase, weather, satellite imagery, street routing, geocoding, reverse geocoding). If you are interested, please click here for more information.

When a foot is not a foot

When integrating FME input/output with Smallworld there is one unit of measure that you need to be particularly wary about... the "foot". Depending on whom you are talking to a foot can be different things.

Consider this...

	When people talk about	FME calls it	Smallworld calls it
	International Foot	IFOOT	:feet
	US Survey Foot	FOOT	:usfeet

This is important in two places when setting up your FME mapping files:

1. Finding the correct FME coordinate system for the non-Smallworld end of the mapping file
   • If a customer tells you that they are giving you data to import into Smallworld and its units is "feet" make sure that you clarify whether it is in International Feet or US Survey Feet.
   • Looking at the FME coordinate system browser, I notice that many of the State Plane Coordinate Systems use the US Survey Foot.
   • You will need to clarify the same question when a customer asks you to export data from Smallworld. Typically, though, they will ask you for the data in a particular coordinate system and FME will know what units comprise that coordinate system.
2. Finding the correct FME coordinate system to match your current Smallworld application coordinate system
• Probably the biggest confusion of feet/usfeet/internationalFeet comes when you are trying to configure an FME coordinate system to match your Smallworld application coordinate system. You need to be absolutely sure that you are using the same "feet" unit in the FME version of the Smallworld application coordinate system.
• Most application coordinate systems use "cm" or "mm" for units so you won't run into this confusion. Even in US installations where units are measured in feet and inches, the application coordinate system and database coordinate systems are often set to metric units. (Remember that what a user sees on the GIS can be set to show Imperial units even if the underlying coordinate systems use metric units).

A classic sign that you are dealing with the Foot/USFoot issue is if you try loading in data from an external source and it looks like it "almost but not quite" lines up with your existing data. In that case you should carefully review all the coordinate system projections in your data flow process to ensure that the correct "feet" units are used throughout.

Smallworld Product Release History

I recently received a note from a reader of this blog asking if I knew the history of the Smallworld Product release versions and dates. I have never kept close tabs on that so I thought it would be interesting to research it a bit. Thanks to the folks at GE for providing this information!

Source: GE's Americas Customer Support Organization

Product	Release Date
Core Spatial Technology (GIS)
Smallworld 2.0(0)	July 1993
Smallworld 2.0(1)	August 1993
Smallworld 2.0(2)	December 1993
Smallworld 2.0(3)	January 1994
Smallworld 2.0(4)	March 1994
Smallworld 2.1(0)	November 1994
Smallworld 2.1(1)	March 1995
Smallworld 2.1(2)	January 1995
Smallworld 2.1(3)	March 1996
Smallworld 2.1(3)NT	May 1996
Smallworld 2.2(0)	December 1996
Smallworld 2.1(3) G	April 1997
Smallworld 2.2(1)	September 1997
Smallworld 3.0(0)	September 1998
Smallworld 3.1(0)	November 1999
Smallworld 3.1(0)SP1	March 2000
Smallworld 3.1(0)SP2	August 2000
Core Spatial Technology 3.2	June 2001
Core Spatial Technology 3.2.1	November 2001
Smallworld Core Spatial Technology 3.3	June 2002
Smallworld Core Spatial Technology 4	December 2003
Smallworld Core Spatial Technology 4.1	December 2006
Smallworld Core Spatial Technology 4.1.1	February 2008

In addition to this, a conversation I had with Peter Batty recently brought up the fact that he had worked on a version 1.9.6 back in 1992.

A lot has changed in Smallworld in the 20+ years of its existence. In my opinion, the product only gets better with each release. I'm looking forward to seeing more of version 4.2 at the EMEAI Conference.

How do interact with FME in Smallworld?

I was asked a question yesterday at the conference about how I interact with FME from Smallworld and thought I would start an informal survey of readers to see what your responses are.

The question is: How do you interact with FME from Smallworld?

1) Do you see FME as an application that is launched from a Smallworld session?

2) Or do you prefer to use FME more as a standalone tool that connects to a Smallworld server process?

My own preference is to see FME as a standalone tool that makes a connection to a Smallworld server. That way any business analyst that does not have a Smallworld session running could still make a connection to a central Smallworld server port and run the workspace. Having this configuration would also facilitate use of FME Server with Smallworld. This method of interaction would be great for reading from Smallworld. But I suppose that writing to a Smallworld database might make one lean towards option#2.

With option #2, you as a Smallworld user could control which alternative the data was being written to and then you could do a final check of the data in your alternative before you committed it.

So I suppose that my preferred mode of operation includes both above-mentioned options. A "FME connects to Smallworld server" option for reading data and for selected controlled write operations. And a "Smallworld launches FME" option for the more ad hoc write operations.

I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Smallworld High Definition

John Eason at GE was giving me grief for not posting more frequently to this blog. So here's a post for John :)

Come to the Smallworld Americas Users Conference in Phoenix in October and learn about "Smallworld High Definition". No other details were forthcoming so I had to make my own guesses.

Smallworld High Definition might mean...

- you can now see the Smallworld GUI from across the room

- even if your swmfs server goes down, Smallworld tries to guess what your data really looks like (kind of like HD TV guessing pixels when the signal is bad)

- Smallworld will be deployed in an Xbox-like console so that you can bring your data into your home theatre.

- Smallworld will allow embedding multi-media in database objects. I'm not talking about the existing related-documents functionality. I'm thinking more along the lines of Google Maps showing WikiPedia, Panoramia and YouTube.

- Smallworld data and apps go 3D.

Anyone have any thoughts on what Smallworld HD could mean?

Personally, I'm hoping that Smallworld HD might be something along the lines of multi-media integration or 3D rendering. That would be cool!

Well, enough posting... time to get back to work... and John will probably have to wait some time again before my next post.

See you all at the conference in October!

Smallworld turns 20

Smallworld turned 20 in December and I missed it! I have had the privilege of being associated with Smallworld for 12 of those 20 years... some as a Smallworld/GE employee and the rest as a partner in the Geodata/Navigant/Smallworld/GE/RedPlanet/(and now iFactor) career track.

You can read a retrospective from Peter Batty at this blog post.

Configuring the GE Smallworld FME Plugin as a Server

Anyone that has done any work with GE's version of the FME Smallworld Reader/Writer will know that it does not behave well as a stand-alone server.  So you are faced with one of two options:

- purchase SpatialBiz' FME Plug-in.  It has been designed as a server process.

- modify your existing (i.e., already paid-for) GE Smallworld Reader/Writer using a combination of Python, TICs and a few Magik enhancements to allow the FME Workspace to dynamically control the fme_tics_client class.

You can find a more detailed description by look at the "Behind the Scenes" section at http://evangelism.safe.com/smallworld2008.

Here are the steps you would need to take:

- create a Python Module that exposes Tics32.dll functionality

- extend the Python Module to expose various Magik methods such as setCollections(), rollback(), rollforward(), gotoAlternative(), etc.

- modify fme_tics_client.private_run() to listen for TICS messages from the new Python module.

- configure your FME Workspace to use the new Python Module.

I have prepared a package (licensed under LGPL) of Python and Magik code (along with a workspace sample) that I am happy to send out upon request.  Thanks to my employer (Red Planet Consulting, Inc.) for permitting me to make this available to the Smallworld community.

Send me a note at... 

...to request a free copy of the Python, Magik and FME Workspace files I used to integrate FME Server with the GE Smallworld FME Reader/Writer.

FME Evangelist features Smallworld and FME Server

So this is what humidity feels like.  I just arrived in Hollywood, FL (USA) an hour ago having left Boulder, CO a few hours before.  Going from 1 mile (and dry) to sea level and humid is quite the change.  

I'm looking forward to seeing many from the Smallworld community at the conference on Monday and Tuesday.   Please stop by at the Red Planet Consulting booth and say "hi".  Me and John will be the two guys dressed a in mechanics shirts.

Mark Ireland the "FME Evangelist" has a Smallworld User's Conference Special Edition article giving some added detail about the FME Server on Smallworld that Mark Stoakes and Michael Weisman from Safe Software and I will be demonstrating this week.  In addition to the links to the on-line demo videos from a few weeks ago, Mark also provides a bit more detail about the Python functionality that communicates with the Smallworld server image.