Characteristics of the Data Contained in QuickMap

People throughout the world have been demanding more and more that their Geographical Information System (GIS) is open in order to simplify the distribution of spatial data, and avoid being completely locked into one vendor’s proprietary system.  QuickMap has taken this concept to its maximum possible extreme by adopting the Open GIS Consortium’s definition of spatial data.

Data Access and Database Support

QuickMap allows Geographic Information System (GIS) data to be embedded into most relational database systems such as Microsoft Access, SQL Server, or Oracle. Spatial data types are embedded within the database by implementing the Open GIS (OGIS) Consortium’s well-known text (WKT) representation of geometry. Geometry is a term adopted by the Open GIS Consortium to refer to two-dimensional spatial data.  The well-known text representation of geometry provides a standard textual representation for spatial data.

This system allows WKT columns of any table in your database to be defined as layers capable of storing spatial data, such as the location of a tree, street centreline, or land parcel.

GIS of the past were spatially centric, focused on gathering spatial data and attaching nonspatial ‘attribute’ data. QuickMap integrates spatial and nonspatial data providing a single point of access through the SQL interface.

Storing spatial data in this way allows the data to be integrated into virtually any relational database, and offers the flexibility of allowing many different views of the data without duplication. As relational technology has been around for a long time, QuickMap inherits all of the reliable, flexible and robust attributes of this technology.

Data Compression

QuickMap uses a spatial data compression technology that offers high compression without loss of information, and rapid decompression. Most data distributed with QuickMap is compressed using this technology into ‘QIK files’ and this makes CD-ROM based distribution of large spatial datasets viable. For example, QuickMap can store all legal parcel boundaries, road and river boundaries and street address on one CD-ROM for the whole of New Zealand, or the entire topographical dataset on two CD-ROM’s.

Another advantage of using a compressed file format is that it enables QuickMap to run at a high speed.

High Speed Data Display

The large volume of data delivered to the user’s screen in order to draw a map has always presented a performance problem to GIS vendors. To deliver the result within a timeframe the user is happy with has often not been achieved. Users of GIS systems have become accustomed to waiting several seconds, and sometimes even minutes, in order to view their result.

In multi-user environments where the user is sharing data from one central system, the GIS software often places such a large load on the system that the performance drops to unacceptable levels.

A lot of effort has been put in to ensure that one of QuickMap’s defining features is its speed. QuickMap can draw screens containing a large amount of spatial data at high speed.