Direct inquiries/resumes may be sent to: Jessica@geosearch.com

From the PostGIS web site:

PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. In effect, PostGIS “spatially enables” the PostgreSQL server, allowing it to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic information systems (GIS), much like ESRI’s SDE or Oracle’s Spatial extension.

The data server can be downloaded from CodePlex. The data server is very easy to install. If you already have an existing PostGIS database, you only need to run the “Register.bat” batch script and the data server will be installed in GeoMedia. Like GeoMedia/Oracle, for read-only connections, you don’t even need to create a metadata schema! If you’d like to be able to PostGIS data, you’ll need to use the database utilities that come with the data server and setup the application metadata.

For those that are new to PostGIS, Intergraph provides a very nice PostGISGDOUserInfo.txt file that will guide you through the process of first installing PostGIS and then installing the data server. For those that would like to learn a lot more about PostGIS, there’s a recently released book named “PostGIS in Action“. Although I haven’t seen it myself, I’ve read many good things about it online.

One last note. If you’re a Windows Vista+ user, the data sever will NOT install unless you escalate a DOS window to “Administrator”. To do this, do the following:

1) In the start menu, type “CMD”

2) Right click on the result at the top and select “Run as administrator”

You’ll know that it worked as you’ll get back a “success” message box as opposed to a “error” message box.

Halsey Wise (Current Intergraph CEO) Keynote
Ola Rollen (Hexagon CEO) Keynote
Reid French (Current Intergraph COO) Keynote

• The Hexagon purchase of Intergraph
• Upcoming software
• Future plans

Intergraph is pleased to announce the availability of the new Security, Government & Infrastructure User Forum website.  We encourage you to utilize the forum website as a means of exchanging information with your peers.

Access to the Security, Government & Infrastructure User Forum website is available from any of the product support web pages or via the direct link below:

URL: http://userforums.intergraph.com/support/
Login: Same as your Siebel username and password.

Instructions for using the forum are available from the “Help & Guidelines” link on the User Forum page. Likewise, if you have any questions or feedback regarding the forums please send an email via the “Contact Us” tab.

Thank you,
The Intergraph® Customer Support Team

I’ve checked this out a few times, but haven’t had a chance to dig in much. Looks promising and it’s definitely a good sign from Intergraph.

When I clicked on the “REPLACE Example” link in the help, I was brought to a page with a whole host of examples. Here’s a copy and paste from the EXAMPLES sections:

Abstract

The following example shows how to use the REPLACE functional attribute.  This applies to GeoMedia products version 6.1.6 and later.

Code Example

REPLACE(“THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT”, “-”, “ ”) equals THIS IS EXAMPLE TEXT

REPLACE(“THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT”, “-”, “ ”, 6) equals THIS-IS EXAMPLE TEXT

REPLACE(“THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT”, “-”, “ ”, 1, 2) equals THIS-IS EXAMPLE-TEXT

REPLACE(“THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT”, “I%-”, “ ”, 1, 0, TRUE()) equals THIS IS EXAMPLE-TEXT

REPLACE(“THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT”, “i%-”, “ ”, 1, 0, TRUE()) equals THIS-IS-EXAMPLE-TEXT

Very cool!

A couple of notes:

1. Since the examples are written on a web page, it’s likely you won’t be able to just copy the example and paste it into the Functional Attributes dialog. You’ll instead need to first paste it into Notepad or some other text editor and clean-up the example. So, if you find your example not working correctly in GeoMedia, make sure to clean it up first.
2. When I logged into the Intergraph knowledge base directly (as opposed to accessing it through the help), initially I wasn’t able to find the same knowledge base entry. If you’re going to search the knowledge base directly, make sure to choose “(All GeoMedia Products)” under the “Product” section. I chose “GeoMedia and GeoMedia Professional” and didn’t get any records returned. As soon as I chose “(All GeoMedia Products)”, the same knowledge base entry I found in the help was also available in the Knowledge Base result set.

The folks at Intergraph recently introduced a new search tool in GeoMedia that brings my ability to develop data maintenance workflows of this sort to a new level.  It is often the case that the most difficult part of a data maintenance or integration workflow is not in linking the records after you find the right place on the map, or in digitizing the geometry, but in actually searching and/or panning and zooming the map to where it needs to be to allow entry of the new spatial data record.

Here is an example… I have a spreadsheet that I acquired from the local power company that specifies locations (in non-standard English descriptions) for every light pole in my client’s city.  All that my client wants to do is create a GIS point feature that is attributed with the unique ID for each light pole from the spreadsheet and inherit the other attributes from the spreadsheet.  It is easy to digitize a point for each pole once you know where to put it.  The difficult part of the workflow is to turn this English descriptive location into a meaningful location on the map  for each record.

In the old paradigm, I would use the attribute query tool to predefine a SQL statement in which someone can search for a parcel or a street to help the person doing the data entry find the location of interest.  This was difficult for the user because in order to find anything at all, the user cannot do anything to the SQL that would mess it up – like forget to put the closing apostrophe at the end of the statement if it is a text field.  However, with the new search tool, (available in version 6.01.06.19), I can predefine a search, pin wildcards to each side of the user-input search term, and GeoMedia will provide an input box for the user to enter the search string.  The result is that it is easy for a person completely unversed in SQL to reliably execute a search query in GeoMedia against an available table or feature class.

This may seem pedestrian to GIS veterans, but I really think that this is a huge leap forward in the usability of GeoMedia workflows for folks less versed in database.  And let’s face it – it means that us GIS veterans have to do less of the drudgery of data creation.  So… create those workflows, pass them off to the interns, and go have yourself some shrimp cocktail.

For more details on exactly how to use the search tool, open up GeoMedia , go to Help –> GeoMedia Help Topics, and type ‘search’ on the index tab.