MapInfo Professional - What's New

MapInfo Professional v9.0 supports access to the latest database sources.

Supported Database Servers in v9.0

Supported ODBC Driver Versions for v9.0

• On-the-fly data indexing:
  Customers that are using data served from database sources now have greater usability of that data. Specifically, the are able to use Query --> Find and Table --> Geocode options against the remote data.
• Automatic recognition of time based data remote data sources: When accessing data from MS Excel, MS Access and relational database systems, MapInfo Professional v9.0 will automatically recognize data fields that contain time or date/time information and use the appropriate data type in the MapInfo table. This measn that MapInfo Professional is ready to do time based analysis right out of the box.
• Support for ESRI SDE data:
  Public organizations that have existing data stored in ESRI SDE systems can use MapInfo Professional v9.0 to access this data directly. This enhancement facilitates organizations that want to expand the use of geospatial information by non GIS experts and avoid costly data duplication effort, to use MapInfo Professional in departments that do not require complicated GIS systems.
• Extensible data access technology:
   The option to extend the supported data access formats based on need provides a truly rich data access engine that supports the ability to open virtually any data source or format.

Updated Mapping Features for Better Looking Maps

Curved labeling:

Curved labels produce easy to read street maps and often convey more information in a meaningful and effective way.
 

Regular segment labels:

Curved Labels:

New emergency management fonts:

The use of industry accepted symbology for emergency situation, promotes the sharing of critical data in a consistent way. This in turn, leads to easy to read maps due to familiar and well known symbology

Emergency font -- fire

Emergency font -- gun fire incident

Layout templates:

MapInfo Professional's layout templates provide numerous capabilities to enhance printed map readability. For example: MapInfo Professional's layout template creation-tools provide the ability to automatically include print time, print date and option to prompt the map creator for comment text. These elements ensure that the map will contain information that will assist map reviewers by knowing the currency of the map as well as any key points the map creator wanted to convey.

Print templates:

MapInfo Professional users often need to print maps using a standard template which includes items such as logos, scale bars, disclaimers, etc. v9.0 now includes the ability to create print templates which can include elements that are updated on-the=fly at print time, such as scale bar, scale text, print date, print time and user defined prompts. This means that users don't need to recreate the template each time, and it also ensures that mandatory information such as copyright notices and disclaimers are included.

Print Template

Layout created at print time

Time Based Analysis

MapInfo Professional will now recognize and preserve time based data from a number of data sources and this data can be visualized and analyzed using the full range of MapInfo Professional capabilities.

Example Use Case:

A crime analyst working with incident data can use the time information from their systems to better understand the spread of incident activity over both time and geography.

• For example, a crime analyst that is working with incidents related to drunk and disorderly conduct can easily query their incident database for all incidents that occurred between 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. over a given period of time. This subset can be visualized on a map to help plan patrols or other policing activities.
• Incident data that includes start and end times can be analyzed for the duration of events. Data on stolen vehicles that includes the time the vehicle was reported stolen to the time it was recovered can be used to determine how much the vehicle may have been driven. In this case the elapsed time and the distance may both be part of the analysis.
• Pattern analysis involving time data: Crime analysts sometime search for patterns in types of offences and geographical areas. This type of analysis can now also include a time element. For example, maps can be created that depict the number of house burglaries during the daylight hours in a particular region over a period of time. This information can improve the patrol strategy, public awareness campaigns and other activities.

Time Based Analysis Features in v9.0

• New data types added: Date/Time and Time:
  The MapInfo data format now includes new Date/Time and Time data formats. In the past, data fields that contained time and date/time values were treated in various ways by MapInfo Professional. The data was converted into string data or in the case of a date/time value MapInfo Professional would ignore the time portion of the information. The support for Date/Time and Time data is comprehensive and this opens up many new visualization and analytical possibilities in MapInfo Professional
• Automatic recognition of time based data from MS Excel, MS Access and RDBMS:
  When accessing data from MS Excel, MS Access and relational database systems, MapInfo Professional v9.0 will automatically recognize data fields that contain time or date/time information and use the appropriate data type in the MapInfo table. This means that MapInfo Professional is ready to do time based analysis right out of the box!
• New functions to convert data into time data formats:
  While MapInfo Professional will automatically pick up tme data from other systems, some data such as information stored in text files, or perhaps some data in legacy MapInfo tables stored as character fields may need to be converted into a time data type. MapInfo Professional v9.0 includes functions to convet both numeric or character string data into time or date time values. These capabilities ensure that MapInfo Professional users are able to apply the new time based analytical capabilities of MapInfo Professional to all their appropriate data.
• New time based analytical functions and operators:
  A variety of functions have been provided to visualize and analyze time data. These include functions to obtain the system time, format time data and extract portions of information such as the minutes, seconds or hours from time data. These capabilities increase the flexibility and utility of the time data and increase the analytical capabilities.
• Visualization and analysis of time based data:
  Time and Date/Time fields in MapInfo Professional can be used in thematic maps and can be searched/queried against. This makes it possible to perform analysis incorporating data from a range of time values. For example, crime incidents that occurred between 11:00 p.m and 5:00 a.m.
• Full MapBasic support for Time and Date/Time data:
  The Time and Date/Time support in MapInfo Professional includes support in MapBasic as well. This means that the Open table capabilities will work with Time Data and a full range of supporting functions are provided. Existing functions that return information about a Table such as the type of data each field contains have also been updated. This allows our customers and partners to be able to build applications incorporating the time component of their data.

Productivity Enhancements in version 9.0

Wizard based process from producing professional quality output:

MapInfo Professional v9.0 has added customizable Layout template capabilities. This makes the process of producing consistent professional output faster and easier than ever before.

Multiple hotlink support from a single record:

MapInfo Professional users that regularly link their map data to external files, Web links and applications are now able to easily set up multiple hotlinks for their data. From an analysis point of view this makes it quicker and easier to reference information from a variety of data sources. For example, a data set of wireless communication towers can be hotlinked to a picture of the tower, a schematic drawing, and intranet http:// link to an internal system that pulls up live information about state of the tower's operation.

Become a power user with MapBasic. Access MapBasic help directly from MapInfo Professional:

Simple tasks can be automated in MapInfo Professional by capturing actions from the MapBasic window that is built into the software. These capabilities can be extended with knowledge of MapBasic. The many MapInfo Professional users that are taking advantage of this capability are now able to get help on MapBasic capabilities directly from MapInfo Professional. This makes it easier to get the most from using MapBasic and the MapBasic window.

New Preferences for managing Layout and Legend windows:

System preferences for Layout Window behavior are now available for the user to control. This includes the redraw behavior to use when working with both the Map window and Layout window. It is now possible to set the default behavior to always update the Layout window if the Map window has changed. In previous versions of MapInfo Professional, users that desired this behavior needed to change it every time they created a Layout window. In addition. there are now options to set MapInfo Professional to automatically prompt to save a workspace when a Layout Window or Legend window is closed. This small enhancement will be particularly valuable to new users of MapInfo Professional.

New preferences for Find Selection behavior:

In version 9.0, it is possible to control two aspects of MapInfo Professional's behavior with respect to changing a map view automatically after working with a selection of data. A frequently used menu command in the software is Find Selection. This command allows users to quickly change the map view to a set of data that is of interst. It is now possible to control whether or not MapInfo Professional will automatically change the zoom of the map while re-centering the map of the selection. In prior versions of MapInfo Professional the software behaved in different ways depending on the situation and the result was not always what was desired by the user. The ability to control this behavior potentially saves mouse clicks on this operation each time a user is executing a Find Selection command.

A second change is that it is possible to control whether or not MapInfo Professional will zoom and center the map on data that has just been pasted into a map window. Previously this could not be controlled and users would find themselves sometimes executing extra actions to get the map in the state they required.

New preferences for default label style:

A preference has been added to set a default label style to be used on map windows. This new preference is particularly useful in locales that use a different character set than the standard one used by most English speaking computers. In previous versions of MapInfo Professional a user that worked with a different character set such as Windows Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, etc would be required to change the Font for every layer that they wanted labelled. MapInfo Professional will now use a more sensible default based on the Windows system as well as allow user control over the default font to be used when labeling.

Window Manager tool enhancements:

A small, but useful enhancement has been made to the Window Manager tool that is included with MapInfo Professional. It is now possible to set a specific size for a window in terms of paper units. This can make on-screen presentations of multiple map windows easier to set up and also is useful if a number of windows are going to be saved into graphic file formats. The ability to set a specific window size will make it easier to save a large number of windows to a consistent size.

Other Enhancements

Documentation Enhancements
• Updated help includes all reference information
• MapBasic help support from the MapBasic window

MapBasic

• CoordSysName$() function
• CurDateTime function
• CurTime function
• FormatTime$ function
• FME Refresh table statement
• GetDate function
• GetTime function
• HotlinkInfo function
• Hour function
• MakeDateTime function
• Minute function
• NumberToDateTime function
• NumberToTime function
• RegionInfo() function
• Second function
• StringToDateTime function
• StringToTime function