Is MapPoint 2009 capable????

Well, first of all....

This is my first thread in this forum. Greetings for all!!!

I have been working in many years in professional gis corporate systems based in many technologies Smallworld, Esri, Oracle Spatial....

Recently I have discovered this product of Ms, MapPoint 2009. It surprised and liked me because is user friendly interface, the quality and amount of the map data included and the possibilities to use it like a "small" or "basic" gis. And also ratio price/quality/specs is very good!

When I started to learn how to operate with this application, I started to find some limitations... It is possible to do COM extensions and plugins in order to increase the functionality. But I have one main question: The plugins that you can do to expand the functionality can go more far that "automate" MapPoint 2009 actions???


For example, via programming plugis ...

Can you make territories with fixed geometries (defined shapes, etc)? ... I mean not only with the very limited "Postal Code" as smaller extension avalaible, that is very hard limitation.

Can you do spatial operations?
I mean, from a closed shape, calculate the pushpins inside on it, calculate the union or intersection of areas, predicates like this object is "inside" or "outside", another, etc...

Can you extract map data inside a "geometry" that you create?
I mean you create a closed shape and you want to obtain the postal adresses included on it.

If the answers to these questions is "yes"... The api included is enough and you can do it more or less "easily"?... Or you have to build and made all functions needed to do it?

Many, many thanks in advance. We like this product and if we can go ahead with the issues written above probably we will use in our organization.

Best regads to all and many thanks in advance!!!
Juan.

Hi Jaun,

Yes, you can build COM Addins and exnd MapPoint's functionality to suit your needs.
You would need to develop the program in your favorite development environment (.Net, Java, Delphi, VB6, etc) and call your own methods.

There are a lot of Addins developed already that may interest you,
see Map Forums - MapPoint Add-ins and Related Products at MapForums.com (http://www.mapforums.com/mappoint-add-ins-related-products/)

I (and others) provide custom development, as well.

Mike Mattys
Mattys Consulting - Custom Programming (http://www.mattysconsulting.com)

I agree MapPoint is a good value - but as you're finding it has lots of limitations. We tend to use an external GIS (MapInfo Pro) for a lot of the processing and stuff MapPoint is not capable of, and just you MapPoint for what it is good at - displaying data and deplying apps and limited analysis of data.
Eric

Hi Eric,

And here I thought MapInfo was just a COM Addin for MapPoint!

What about all that VB4/5/6 code that folks have written for MapInfo
because it has such a rich object model?

Can't MS improve MapPoint?

Maybe some folks don't want their info in the cloud, eh?

Mike Mattys
Mattys Consulting - Custom Programming (http://www.mattysconsulting.com)

Thanks for the answers.

So this mean that the features that I want are not easy to implement programming add-ons in MapPoint??

I think all of them are possible and I don't think it's too hard... for spatial operations I would recommend to check out MPSuperShape.

To extract data, that is already built-in... use QueryPolygon. It is equivalent to the right-click "Export to Excel" feature.

Good luck with your evaluation and let us know how it goes!

Eric

Very interesting!

I am now analyzing MPSuperShape

About your statement:

"To extract data, that is already built-in... use QueryPolygon. It is equivalent to the right-click "Export to Excel" feature."

This is exactly where my questions go...
The export to excel feature only can export data that you previosly import to MapPoint... I mean you can not export, for example, the set of adress list for a concrete area or you can not export the geometrical data of any area. Do you know what I mean?

Thanks to all!
Good forum!

First map a demographic variable - such as map Population by zip code. Then the Export to Excel will work for one of the geometries.
Eric

Yes but this doesnt export the adress lists of the zone....

For example:
Church Street 1, 28023, Barcelona, Spain
Chruch Street 5, 28023, Barcelona, Spain
Main Street 2, 28024, Barcelona, Spain
(etc) because this adress list is inside the area of a shape, for example.

Also for many things like territories, the minimum area level is Postal Code... I think this is a very hard limitation.

True yes, you cannot export address ranges or a list of addresses for an area. You can actually loop over and export all the POI's, but not any arbitary address and not residential locations. I can't think of a tool that does that - maybe BusinessMap? BusinessMAP--Key Features: Create Targeted Mail Lists (http://www.esri.com/software/busmap/about/maillists.html) I think this costs extra however... as I remember, you pay per record extracted.
Eric