So everyone is talking about election campaigns in germany right now …and the new design for the ZDF news programme “ZDF heute”. No doubt about it: looks nice, shiny, sparkling like an iPod turned into a TV studio.

The new "ZDF heute" Look and Feel

But wait, why are they using this WWII-era-like antiquated cylindrical map projection for their new world map (looks like Miller projection)? Where Russia seems to be almost four times larger than China and (of course) Greenland as large as South America!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not that Peters projection fundamentalist, like those cartographers from the TV series West Wing. But, in fact, there are far better choices for world map projections with better compromises between shape and area distortions than a cylindrical projection. For instance Winkel Tripel or the Robinson projections.

I’ve got another question too – why some areas in the map are raised and others are lowered – like Mexico is shifted below the US? Actually that question appeared at the ZDF’s internet forum as well. The answer was: it’s an artist’s impression (not a map!) – it looks more pleasant this way :) Any questions left, huh? Read Mark Monmonier’s How to Lie with Maps!

Frequently I come across the need to upload files into Oracle as LOB’s. For instance, I let Ant install some SQL scripts and want to upload the resulting log files as a kind of installation protocol into the DB. I’ve found the easiest way to do this is using the SQL*Loader tool (for which I have the appropriate Ant Task) directly from Ant.

Here is how it works:

<echo file="uploadlog.ctl">
    <![CDATA[
load data
infile *
replace
into table MYLOBTABLE
fields terminated by ','
(
lobid char(100),
lob_file FILLER char,
clobdata LOBFILE(lob_file) TERMINATED BY EOF
)
begindata
transferlog,${sqllog.file}]]>
</echo>
<ora:sqlldr logon="user/pass@oradb">
	control = uploadlog.ctl
</ora:sqlldr>

First I write a temporary CTL file (with the <echo> task) to specify that I want to upload the file behind the ${sqllog.file} property, afterwards I execute this CTL file with the SQL*Loader.

And jeez, I can even upload whole filesets (directories and sub directories) when I use the <for> loop task.

Dave Bouwman gave a nice presentation on “Usability in the GeoWeb” at the Texas GIS Forum. I found it very good and each of the 140 pages worth to look at. It has some really enlightening remarks on today’s usability issues with WebGIS sites. In fact most of today’s WebGIS applications are way too complex, intimidating and not focused on the applications real purpose. A plethora of incomprehensible toolbar items, table of content widgets, generic search formulars will overstrain users and slow down the whole interface.

I strongly agree with Dave Bouwman’s assumption that this is the result of a long lasting strategy of trying to cram desktop GIS into the browser with GIS manufacturers concentrating on developing utterly generic “out-of-the-box” WebGIS products. So this wants us GIS developers make to believe that we are able to produce WebGIS applications in a jif. But the simple fact is that 99% of so called WebGIS apps have a quite narrow purpose, thus need pretty focused functions and user interfaces instead of bloated generic UI’s.

Am I afraid of web designers eating my lunch?

… Nope, quite the contrary! Good web sites need a lot of knowlegde in usabilty design. And since web designers usually offer this kind of knowledge, I would appreciate a much closer collaboration with them. Web design actually is not my bread and butter. I would rather like to concentrate much more on things like backend GIS functions, geocoders, tile servers etc. In other words, as a GIS developer I’ll gladly share my lunch with web designers where this task-sharing increases my margin for more potentially feasible projects. Finally, I think this way everyone will get more lunch by letting everyone do what they do best.

Can you remember the time when the prophets announced death of cartography by Google Maps & Co? Well nevertheless today we are experiencing lots of high quality cartography products; just have to look at the Le Monde diplomatique and the Atlas of Globalisation (for one thing). Even on the internet: for instance look at all those map making going on at the Wikipedia. Nope, cartography is still alive and well. Actually it is so alive, that it is called neogeography by some other prophets.

Now there is another discussion raised in the UK, whether british history and cultural heritages is threatened by …you have three guesses… Google Maps? The accusation: many internet maps fail to show interesting land marks such as flea markets, museums and other tourist traps. “Corporate cartographers are demolishing thousands of years of history” said Mary Spence, President of the British Cartographic Society. Yet once again, after motorcycles replaced horses, the civilised world is on the verge of doom. Isn’t it? No (not this time); for a simple reason: If I want to get into tourist traps, I buy me tourist map. Google Maps itself is like a road map, specialised for navigating from A to B. Whoever wants to stroll from Queensway station to the Royal Geographic Society and loves to discover all those beautiful roadside attractions would likely use another kind of map.

So, to make a long story short, if there is a problem, then most likely it will be of the same type as: “I can’t see the sky while travelling on the tube“.

However, recently Google added a layer of georeferenced Wikipedia articles to it’s Map. And this simple example shows the true challenge the Geoweb is facing right now. We shouldn’t blame internet map providers for showing or not showing this and that on their maps. Instead we should care about how to spatially connect all those information flying around the web in a semantic way. How can we draw spatially related information out of Wikipedia, categorise and connect it with other data or drawing geocoded locations out of books from the Project Gutenberg.

Dickens' London Map

Just for an example lets take this nice Charles Dickens’ London Map I’ve found. Ambitious efforts are now being made to produce similar maps from any arbitrary digital text due to sophisticated geocoding techniques. These are the true problems to be solved. Then I’m pretty sure we will see better and far more interesting city or tourist guides online then ever printed to date. Imagine, Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap could answer questions like “Where are settings or locations of plot events of victorian novels located in London’s Soho?”.

Some time ago I’ve read two interesting articles by Dave Bouwman about several problems with designing/upgrading ESRI ArcSDE geodatabases and that the whole design process actually should not be as hard as rocket science. Though for some reasons lots of things involved in this actually are cumbersome and in some area really feels like rocket science. One big issue with ArcSDE is the lack of tools DBA’s usually love to do backups, imports, exports, upgrades with. I think ESRI noticed that and eventually invented the Visio UML modelling tool. If you ask me… improvement for the worse.

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” D.N.A.

The whole ArcCatalog schema wizard thing (probably been extremely costly to develop) is not practical for database change management; neither scriptable nor automatable. It might be a convenient way to set up a database from scratch but it’s rather useless for upgrading existing schemas. So finally it is nothing else then the very dark side of ArcCatalog.

If I want to roll out a set of DB schema changes, I’ll release a bunch of SQL files. But what if I want to roll out changes specific to the geodatabase – like adding topological network rules or modifying a feature class? What I need for ArcSDE is a dead easy way to deliver short, comprehensible scripts that contain all this DDL stuff.

Just because I’ve had very good experiences with Apache Ant to handle database change management, I started to develop some Ant task’s for ArcSDE. For example if I want to add a column to a feature class, now I can add a simple task along with my usual Ant build scripts.

  <sde:addcolumn connection="sde.conn" tablename="BUILDINGS">
        <columndef name="BUILD_DATE" type="date" nullable="false"/>
  </sde:addcolumn>

Push all of the capability of ArcSDE down to the database level

Hopefully ESRI will continue the process of pushing all ArcSDE capabilities to the RDBMS, as it already been done with the implementation of the st_geometry type. And thus hopefully someday we’ll be able to do all the DBA tasks on the database level where it belongs.

See Cool Stuff, Meet Interesting People

The Java User Group Berlin Brandenburg is organizing the Eclipse DemoCamp Berlin on December 19 at Coffee Karma newthinking store.

The goal of the DemoCamps is to organize local events where individuals can show off the interesting things they are doing with Eclipse and also have an opportunity to meet other Eclipse users.

I’ll present our utility asset management software CUBIS POLIS which is based on the Eclipse RCP.

If you plan on attending please add your name on the wiki page where you can find all other information regarding this event: http://wiki.eclipse.org/Berlin_DemoCamp.

The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World

I just got a copy of Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map which came out in paper last week. The reason I’m really excited about this book is that it is amongst others about history of analytical cartography and solving urban sustainability problems as seen by Victorian London in the mid 19th century. In fact, as Johnson mentioned, there was an open question that time about whether such huge cities like London (over 2.5 million population in1850) will be still sustainable or whether it will collapse just as the ancient Rom did at a certain point.

The Story takes place in August 1854 when a cholera outbreak was raging in London. Dr. John Snow, a private physician and kind of Sherlok Holmes-like cross-disciplinary thinker, was able to link the epidemic to contaminated drinking water source from public pumps. He was drawing a map with elements like fatalities, water pumps and streets to advance an argument about the nature of the disease.

Yes, it’s a remarkable example of how people started to recognize the importance of spatial dimensions for better understanding complex problems in an urbanizing world. But it’s also a remarkable historical example of how map-making pretends to be objective, where there is a clear author’s intention behind. In this particular case, Snow’s intention was to reinforce his theory on the cause of the disease. In fact, his map was rather a graphic description or summary of his studies than an analytical tool.

The Ghost in the Map

Nevertheless, there is a memorable GIS story coming out of the book: the way of taking advantage of local knowledge and (amateur) cross-disciplinary thinking on a local level. It shows the importance to empower communities through GIS technology and participation.

For instance the 2005 Hurricane Katrina GISCorps disaster response is a good example for the importance of participatory GIS and community mapping. Teams of volunteers organized by the GISCorps responded very quickly and produced maps for the initial responders and briefing maps showing things like power outages or road closures. They also helped rescue teams through geocoding (translating) addresses into GPS coordinates. The nub of the matter: all these efforts could only be accomplished by the community itself (in close collaboration with private industry).

PS: Seems that the guys from Riverhead Books produced a little trailer cartoon, which by the word of Steven Johnson can be described as “Yellow Submarine meets 28 Days Later” :)

Intergeo is now just around the corner, bags packed and ready to go to Leipzig this week. Unfortunately, this year the event clashes with FOSS4G in Victoria, Canada, so i’ll miss out on some GIS fellows.

In the run-up to the Intergeo, I was glad to read a good in-depth article on Geoweb from the german weekly newspaper Die Zeit.

After last years success, OSGeo will organize another Open Source Park as part of the exhibition.

This map (from brennende-autos.de) shows recent arson attacks on cars in the city of Berlin. So, if you’re about to visit Berlin – please first check where it is safe to leave your car (especially the luxurious ones).

Java developers already know about deprecating API’s – the ability to mark specific classes or methods as “deprecated” thus informing API users that they should stop referencing those parts, because they might be removed in future releases. Introducing such a transition period allows code refactoring being less painful (mainly for the public API parts) and preserve backward compatibility.

Along with the rise of new approaches to more agile database techniques, came the idea of using similar practices also in DB development. That means for example, if you want to remove a column then you don’t drop it immediately but mark the column as deprecated. After a transition period of some weeks or months, the column will be dropped. This strategy is of particular interest to database refactoring, because usually database schemas are highly coupled to a wide variety of things. And unlike Java API’s where we can distinguish between protected and public API parts, items within a database schema are potentially always public.

What to deprecate?

The following database artifacts are items that might be deprecated:

• Tables
• Views
• Single Columns
• Stored Procedures, Functions, Sequences

When to deprecate database items?

• Item will be dropped in future
• Is inefficient or insecure to use

How to deprecate?

A deprecation mechanism should fulfill the following requirements

• Deprecation markers should be attached to their items in a manner that they are preserved even if the items will be moved (import/export etc)
• Markers should refer to an explanation why the item has been deprecated and suggest what to use instead
• Throw warning messages when deprecated items are used

Techniques to deprecate database items

In case of Java, the deprecation is carried out through @deprecation comments within the source code. The Java Compiler throws warning messages when it finds references to deprecated items. Obviously within a database we cannot issue compile warnings. The only way to inform about calls to deprecated items is at runtime. That means every time a deprecated table, column, view or so is accessed, a warning message should be written to a log table. But how can we know when those items are accessed?

Oracle databases are offering the following options:

1) Triggers: It’s the standard way to attach DML monitoring to database tables. But triggers cannot monitor on SELECT’s and they are not working on Stored Procedures, Sequences and things of this nature.

2) Database Auditing: With Oracle’s Regular Auditing one can monitor also the use of Views, Functions and Sequences plus one can even log the SQL statement that causes the audit event. But to monitor table access on column-level, Fine-Grained Auditing (FGA) is needed. FGA is only available with Oracle Enterprise Edition.

Issuing deprecation warnings

Another problem is about the deprecation warning messages content itself. The logged messages should help developers and admins to figure out from where deprecated items are accessed. That means at least the program name and SQL statement should be logged. Unfortunately Oracle doesn’t offer something like a stack trace (as Java).

Conclusion

Wouldn’t it be nice if databases offered a standard mechanism to deprecate all the variety of items within a database? I think that will be a huge help towards achieving a more agile way of database design.