Reviewing what now Geoweb Publisher V8i is, it is clear that this product has had too much evolution, but the logic remains, there is a big change from what it was a primitive tool for geo-engineers to publish their data in vector and what now is a proposal for geospatial purposes.
I have received V8i version, I think to do a review but first, I would like to talk about how were the earlier versions to do not so heavy the compared article and remember the weaknesses that had.
Publisher – GeoWeb Publisher
Initially, Publisher was a egeomate difficult to implement, because it occupied a lot to know the guts of the Microstation workspace and Geographics legacy. It had no wizard or template icons, everything had to be built manually. By 2004 was released Geoweb Publisher that included half wizard for creating pages with basic frames and to everything that had been built with Publisher (with our nails) it was an offense that did not offset with the improvements. Besides we had to invest to adapt the changes.
The VPR
When Geoweb Publisher arrived, Bentley ceased insisting with the Java applet, which reached with Microstation J. It emerged Bentley’s ActiveX called VPR as an acronym for what you could do with it: view, print and redline.
The service in the form of images was not a problem, the problem was always the display of vector data, although the data were served via IIS, if the original version required the installation of a Java Engine (JRE) more archaic than specific, in AcitveX implementation it closed as only work with Internet Explorer, and it was a trouble make it run for the first time, if you had a slow connection and little patience (or knowledge of what was happening in the liver of the release of data)
Everything of what was done by Vpr was a simple dgn deployment, but it was possible to serve almost anything done by Geographics because in practice the Geoweb Publisher was itself a Geographics working from the server. So the magic was in the wonders that were made on Geographics, could serve thematics, topological analysis, including quasi-vectorize online and this was added as a dgn file associated with the original redline. Of course, with the weaknesses before XM, transparency could not be done unless it would be egeomated with PictureScript Scenes (PSS) there were no dynamic symbols, and was half failed the scales’ management, in practice, the projection was not conventionally and when you build a theme on a new seed file it was lost in space for some strange reason.
It required a fatal resource on the server, it was understood that as being Publisher serving routines implemented in Geographics to user’s demand. Although I admit it was admirable, if we believe it lifted 25,000 plots in vector form in seconds and once they refresh it was not necessary for zoom, only for pan out of the extent. Also the Project Wise integration allowed workflow control and the association to external documents through Web Explorer Lite.
Everything was done following the guidelines of Geographics project; it might be in Oracle, SQL or Access. The display window read the four corners of the screen, and made spatial analysis on the Index file and then loaded the registered dgn recorded in that view (or using the map manager). This deployment was not a common image, as msliks became objects hyperlinks that had bind to the database and thus could display the attached table.
Then allowed to configure categories and attributes in a side tree to turn on or turn off. The limited query keys disguised as buttons that ran Microstation common tasks: turn off or turn on layers (levels), attach reference maps, images, turn off, run mdl routines, macros or vba applications.
Non standards
But there were no OGC standards, it was all an own Bentley’s smoke, at their style. In this situation there were only two possible positions: the resignation of the concerned person that must adjust its shirt’s sleeves (and works hard) or the tranquility that is a GNU hairy bearded who previously worked at NASA and is now dedicated to GIS that will solve it.
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I’ve taken a look at Geoweb Publisher V8i, and I gave my respect to it. I think in this Bentley improves its view of common user, which does not have Walter Mercado next to explain their daily chart. Make it easier, it may be, the fact is that it now has an understandable logic in the flow from the purpose-built to service.
But rather than wait the easy implementation, the power of what it does is interesting as the evolution of the primitive dpr now idpr seems to me great on a concept of space (from map) database where it is possible to integrate both data dwg, dgn, xfm and even archaic shape files that are then served from a spatial database.
And then there is the support of OGC standards.
We’ll see in the coming days.