Here at Desktop Mapping Systems we have been successful in setting up Oracle 8i Spatial on a server and accessing it using MI 5.5 on a client, but the path was not easy. Let me first of all say you will need Oracle 8i Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition will not provide you with the Oracle Spatial component. Here's an excerpt from the Oracle Web site.
Oracle8i Enterprise Edition is compatible with the following option products not available with Oracle8i Standard Edition: Oracle Advanced Security, Oracle Parallel Server, Oracle Partitioning, Oracle Spatial, Oracle Time Series, Oracle Visual Information Retrieval, Oracle Diagnostic Management Pack, Oracle Tuning Management Pack and Oracle Change Management Pack.
It is imperative that your database has the Oracle Spatial component. If you have set up a database without this and wish to add it, you can. If you are using Enterprise edition to set up a database it will generally include the Spatial component for a new database by default.
I'm sure you know the basics for client side setup; install Oracle Client (the Net8 Assistant is pretty friendly), install MI 5.5 DBMS support for Oracle 8i. Though you won't be forced to, now is a good time to re-boot, otherwise you still get that pesky missing DLL message when you start MI.
At this stage you should be able to connect to Oracle through MI, assuming that you've set up a database instance on the Oracle server and told the client the right service name, host name etc..(the Net8 Assistant does a little connection test). Note: this is not an ODBC connection.
OK, so now you can connect and should be able to look at Oracle tables,
though it's all probably aspatial. There are two ways of representing spatial
data in Oracle, using the Relational Model or the Object Relational Model
, we want to use the latter.
The big questions are then "How do I set up Oracle to receive my data
in the Object Relational Model?" and "How on earth do I get my MI data
up-loaded to Oracle?"
Well the answer to these two questions is in one product "EasyLoader",
however unless you download the latest EasyLoader program, you can't. Ironically
MI 5.5 comes with an EasyLoader, but this version doesn't support Oracle8i.
You can download this program from the MapInfo web site or our web site
http://www.mapsys.com.au/downloads.html
EasyLoader is, as the name suggests, easy to use. I won't go into detail
here, but if anyone needs a hand, drop me a line. The best thing about
EasyLoader is that it sets all the other necessary details up for you;
SDO_GEOM_METADATA table, mapinfo.mapinfo_mapcatalog table, Primary_Key
etc....
IMPORTANT: The first time you use EasyLoader to upload a table an Oracle
error appears saying that table does not exist, it seems that EasyLoader
is trying to insert the symbology into MAPINFO_MAPCATALOG table (owned
by user mapinfo), before it has created this table. Either make the MAPINFO_MAPCATALOG
table first (see Chapter 19: Accessing Remote Database Data in the MI User's
Guide), or drop the table (in Oracle) you tried to upload after you get
the error and then try to upload again... it should be fine the second
time around.
On the MapX side of things, well we are still waiting on our copy of MapX 4 which professes to support Oracle8i, hopefully this should arrive in the next day or two.
Regards
Tom Forbes
Neil Havermale wrote:
"A milestone in moving into the broader Business Intelligence market is
our successful relationship with Oracle. Together, we are delivering the
world's first Internet-based spatial solution on Oracle8i. With Oracle,
we are a leading player in the market with a 100% pure Java Spatial
Internet Solution. Since our Internet application was announced in
early spring, the response from our customers and the market has been
exceptional. Evidence of this is our recently announced $2 million
contract with Nextel Communications, the largest contract in MapInfo's
history."John Cavalier
President
MapInfo Corp.
Recent report to the StockholdersOk, now what? I want to access Oracle 8i in a LAN with Professional or
MapX. How do I/we do it? What is the minimal configuration needed?----------------------------------------------------------------------
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