Mapviewer 11g new features and misc. tipps

We are looking forward to the new Mapviewer/Oracle Maps features in 11g !!
Don't ask me, when it will come !! It'l come....
Oracle Maps Developer "LJ" is showing some new functions in his BLOG already !

Namely: Heat Maps



or the "Microscope" - a draggable magnifying glas:



For more info and explanations look at LJ's BLOG directly.

You'll find some interesting tipps on the following as well:

Displaying map tiles in your Java Swing app
APEX, Oracle Maps and Secure Mapping
Displaying labels on your FOI objects
MapViewer for WebLogic kit updated
Generating map legends
Creating a web map from raster image files
Official MapViewer white paper: a primer
World mercator projection used by Oracle's eLocation site
How to read the logs generated by MapViewer
Oracle Maps and APEX
GeoRSS support in Oracle Maps
Cross-domain Oracle Maps scripting
Getting more diagnostic info out of MapViewer
eLocation: a public show case of MapViewer

Not everybody might come across LJ's tipps/BLOG - so I better have the topics mentioned here as well!
Thanks LJ !!

Oracle Maps uses "Openstreetmap" as WMS

Thanks to the analysis work and "hacking" done by my colleague Carsten Czarski I am pleased to present the Openstreetmap solution (free maps...!!) being integrated in Oracle Maps utilising an Openstreetmap WMS service provided by the WHEREGROUP.

In the Oracle Mapviewer it looks like:



Here are some screenshots of the setup of the "Map Tile Layer Definition":



The "cutted" url is : http://osm.wheregroup.com/cgi-bin/mapserv

you will have to use SRID 4326 - I used 10 zoom-levels:



In Oracle Application Express with Oracle Maps it looks like:

A tutorial (in German) can be found on the German APEX Community site.

"Firewall challenges":
The OSM-server resides in the Internet. If your MapViewer Installation is behind a firewall, you'll  need to define your Proxy-Server... this has to be done in the file
"MapViewerConfig.xml" or here:
MapViewer Admin GUI --> Configuration --> search for "Web Proxy Settings"

And the "check-box" for "HTTP Proxy required" has to be set in the MapTileLayer configuration

Geocubes - what is that ?

As the number of FOI's do increase steadily, it makes sense to "cluster" these instead of pointing to a cloud of FOI's.

Last week I came across this new feature called GEOCUBES developed by a Berlin (Germany) located company named Skilldeal.com.

Til end of Feb 2009 the Code (Javascript API, JS API Reference, client library PHP ) is free - I haven't had the time to test it - feel free to test it on your own !

(28.01.2009) One more comment:
I think there is no need for the GEOCUBES functionality in Oracle Maps, as we do influence the appearance of the FOI's according to the Zoom-Levels. In Mapviewer and Oracle Maps we can setup the layers in relation to a Zoom-Level.
This is different in Google Maps: there you do see ALL FOI's at all Zoom-Levels, and therefore it makes sense to use GEOCUBES.