Re: IBM i based GIS products?

All of the GIS stuff we do is from ArcGIS server. ArchGIS holds the primary
address database with the geolocations. They then have "apps" that dig into
the data on the i and join that with the geodatabase to map data. Now in
our case, we have a table on the i that holds all of the addresses, but
have talked about moving much of that to calling a web service to the GIS
database so that we are using only 1 database. (We currently mirror that
data because we have applications that go WAY back that use this common
address table.) This is all tied together using a unique address key that
is common across all systems. There can be a bit of a hit querying the i
vs. the GIS database, but as long as you optimize everything, it isn't too
bad.

Then we can do all of the normal querying that a GIS-based system normally
would.

--
Mike Wills
http://mikewills.me


On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 2:44 PM, Buck <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

My boss floated a question regarding GIS and IBM i.

Today, various departments extract customer data out of our DB2 tables,
geocode it themselves and then image it with MapInfo. That works OK,
except that each department has a different (read more or less obsolete)
copy of the customer information, and they each have different geocoding
databases. The boss would like to see all the geocoding brought onto
the midrange (database of record) and he'd also like to see the GIS
queries done on the midrange as well.

I don't think geocoding is going to be too hard (Doesn't WorksRight do
that?) but GIS queries sound difficult. A known use case is to import
school district shape files from the state GIS service and do a query
similar to '...where geocode inside_boundary(SchoolDistrict101)...'

It seems to me that there must be some midrange companies using GIS, if
only for web based store locators. Any advice on what products are
useful is gratefully appreciated.
--buck calabro
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