Imminent Release of new GeoRaptor Version

Question

Folks,
I am pleased to announce, after 4 months of development and testing, that a new release of GeoRaptor should be released hopefully before
the 2011 Oracle Spatial User Conference in Washington DC this Thursday 19th.
The release manager will make that release but firstly we have to work out how to handle support for SQL Developer 2.1 (which a lot of you
use) and 3.0 (which has recently been released). The reason for this is that the SQL Developer team changed some API calls such that
we have to make separate compilations. We are not sure how to support these within the SQL Developer extensions distribution framework.
It may be that we support download of the 3.0 version via the Oracle extension publication mechanism and the 2.1 version via direct download
from our Sourceforge website. We will inform you when this has been resolved.
No release notes have been compiled as the principal developer (oops, that's me!) will be leaving Australia tomorrow to attend the DC User Conference.
More extensive notes (with images) will be compiled when I get back.
We are still looking for people to:
1. Provide translations of the English dialog menus etc.
2. Write more extensive user documentation. If you use a particular part of GeoRaptor a lot and think you have found out all its functionality and quirks, contact
us and offer to write a few pages of documentation on it. (Open Office or Microsoft Word is fine.)
Here are the things that are in the next release.
New functionality:
Overhaul of Validation Functionality.
1. User can specify own validation SELECT SQL as long as it returns three required columns. The SQL is thus totally editable.
2. Validation update code now allows user to associate a PL/SQL function with an error number which is applied in the UPDATE SQL.
3. UPDATE SQL can use WHERE clause of validation SELECT SQL (1) to update specific errors.
   NOTE: The generated UPDATE statement can be manually edited. It is NEVER run by GeoRaptor. To run any UPDATE, copy the statement
   to the clipboard and run in an appropriate SQL Worksheet session within SQL Developer.
4. Main validation table allows:
   a. Sorting (click on column header) and
   b. Filtering.
   c. Copying to Clipboard via right mouse click sub menu of:
      - Geometry's SDO_ELEM_INFO array constructor.
      - SDO_GEOMETRY constructor
      - Error + validation string.
   d. Access to Draw/Zoom functions which were previously buttons.
   e. Added a new right mouse click menu "Show Feature's Individual Errors" that gathers up all the errors
      it can process - along with the ring / element that is host to the error (if it can) - and displays
      them in the Attribute/Geometry tabs at the bottom of the Map Window (where "Identify" places its results).
      The power of this will be evident to all those who have wanted a way of stepping through errors in a geometry.
   f. Selected rows can now be deleted (select rows: press <DELETE> key or right mouse click>Delete).
   g. Table now has only one primary key column, and has a separate error column holding the actual error code.
   h. Right mouse click men added to table menu to display description of error in the new column (drawn from Oracle documentation)
   i. Optimisations added to improve performance for large error lists.
5. Functionality now has its own validation layer that is automatically added to the correct view.
   Access to layer properties via button on validation dialog or via normal right mouse click in view/layer tree.
Improved Rendering Options.
1. Linestring colour can now be random or drawn from column in database (as per Fill and Point colouring)
2. Marking of SDO_GEOMETRY objects overhauled.
   - Ability to mark or LABEL vertices/points of all SDO_GEOMETRY types with coordinate identifier and
     option {X,Y} location. Access is via Labelling tab in layer>properties. Thus, coordinate 25 of a linestring
     could be shown as: <25> or {x,y} or <25> {x,y}
   - There is a nice "stacked" option where the coordinate {x,y} can be written one line below the id.
   - For linestrings and polygons the <id> {x,y} label can be oriented to the angle between the vectors or
     edges that come in, and go out of, a vertex. Access is via "Orient" tick box in Labelling tab.
   - Uses Tools>Preferences>GeoRaptor>Visualisation>SDO_ORDINATE_ARRAY bracket around x,y string.
3. Start point of linestring/polygon and all other vertices can be marked with user selectable point marker
   rather than previously fixed markers.
4. Can now set a NULL point marker by selecting "None" for point marker style pulldown menu.
5. Positioning of the arrow for linestring/polygons has extra options:
   * NONE
   * START    - All segments of a line have the arrow positioned at the start
   * MIDDLE   - All segments of a line have the arrow positioning in the middle.
   * END      - All segments of a line have the arrow positioning in the END.
   * END_ONLY - Only the last segment has an arrow and at its end.
ScaleBar.
1. A new graphic ScaleBar option has been added for the map of each view.
   For geographic/geodetic SRIDs distances are currently shown in meters;
   For all SRIDs an attempt is made to "adapt" the scaleBar units depending
   on the zoom level. So, if you zoom right in you might get the distance shown
   as mm, and as you zoom out, cm/m/km as appropriate.
2. As the scaleBar is drawn, a 1:<DEMONINATOR> style MapScale value is written
   to the map's left most element in the status bar.
3. ScaleBar and MapScale can be turned off/on in View>Properties right mouse
   click menu.
Export Capabilities.
1. The ability to export a selection from a result set table (ie result of
   executing ad-hoc SQL SELECT statement to GML, KML, SHP/TAB (TAB file
   adds TAB file "wrapper" over SHP) has been added.
2. Ability to export table/view/materialised view to GML, KML, SHP/TAB also
   added. If no attributes are selected when exporting to a SHP/TAB file, GeoRaptor
   automatically adds a field that holds a unique row number.
3. When exporting to KML:
   * one can optionally export attributes.
   * Web sensitive characters < > & etc for KML export are replaced with &gt; &lt; &amp; etc.
   * If a column in the SELECTION or table/view/Mview equals "name" then its value is
     written to the KML tag <name> and not to the list of associated attributes.
     - Similarly for "description" -> <description> AND "styleUrl" -> <styleUrl>
4. When exporting to GML one can optionally export attributes in FME or OGR "flavour".
5. Exporting Measured SDO_GEOMETRY objects to SHP not supported until missing functionality
   in GeoTools is corrected (working with GeoTools community to fix).
6. Writing PRJ and MapInfo CoordSys is done by pasting a string into appropriate export dialog box.
   Last value pasted is remembered between sessions which is useful for users who work with a single SRID.
7. Export directory is remembered between sessions in case a user uses a standard export directory.
8. Result sets containing MDSYS.SDO_POINT and/or MDSYS.VERTEX_TYPE can also be written to GML/KML/SHP/TAB.
   Example:
   SELECT a.geom.sdo_point as point
     FROM (SELECT sdo_geometry(2002,null,sdo_point_type(1,2,null),sdo_elem_info_array(1,2,1),sdo_ordinate_array(1,1,2,2)) as geom
             FROM DUAL) a;
   SELECT mdsys.vertex_type(a.x,a.y,a.z,a.w,a.v5,a.v6,a.v7,a.v8,a.v9,a.v10,a.v11,a.id) as vertex
     FROM TABLE(mdsys.sdo_util.getVertices(mdsys.sdo_geometry(2002,null,null,sdo_elem_info_array(1,2,1),sdo_ordinate_array(1,1,2,2)))) a;
9. A dialog appears at the end of each export which details (eg total) what was exported when the exported recordset/table contains more
   than on shape type. For example, if you export only points eg 2001/3001 from a table that also contains multipoints eg 2005/3005 then
   the number of points exported, and multipoints skipped will be displayed.
10. SHP/TAB export is "transactional". If you set the commit interval to 100 then only 100 records are held in memory before writing.
    However, this does not currently apply to the associated DBASE records.
11. SHP/TAB export supports dBase III, dBase III + Memo, dBase IV and dBase IV + Memo.
    Note: Memo allows text columns > 255 characters to be exported. Non-Memo formats do not and any varchar2 columns will be truncated
    to 255 chars. Some GIS packages support MEMO eg Manifold GIS, some do not.
12. Note. GeoRaptor does not ensure that the SRID of SDO_GEOMETRY data exported to KML is in the correct Google Projection.
    Please read the Oracle documentation on how to project your data is this is necessary. An example is:
    SELECT OBJECTID,
           CODIGO as name,
           NOME as description,
           MI_STYLE,
           SDO_CS.TRANSFORM(shape,'USE_SPHERICAL',4055) as shape
      FROM MUB.REGIONAL;
13. NOTE: The SHP exporter uses the Java Topology Suite (JTS) to convert from SDO_GEOMETRY to the ESRI Shape format. JTS does not handle
    circular curves in SDO_GEOMETRY objects you must "stroke" them using sdo_util.arc_densify(). See the Oracle documentation on how
    to use this.
Miscellaneous.
1. Selection View - Measurement has been modified so that the final result only shows those geometry
   types that were actually measured.
2. In Layer Properties the Miscellaneous tab has been removed because the only elements in it were the
   Geometry Output options which have now been replaced by the new GML/KML/etc export capabilities.
3. Shapefile import's user entered tablename now checked for Oracle naming convention compliance.
4. Identify based on SDO_NN has been removed from GeoRaptor given the myriad problems that it seems to create across versions
   and partitioned/non-partitioned tables. Instead SDO_WITHIN_DISTANCE is now used with the actual search distance (see circle
   in map display): everything within that distance is returned.
5. Displaying/Not displaying embedded sdo_point in line/polygon (Jamie Keene), is now controlled by
   a preference.
6. New View Menu options to switch all layers on/off
7. Tools/Preferences/GeoRaptor layout has been improved.
8. If Identify is called on a geometry a new right mouse click menu entry has been added called "Mark" which
   has two sub-menus called ID and ID(X,Y) that will add the labeling to the selected geometry independently of
   what the layer is set to being.
Some Bug Fixes.
* Error in manage metadata related to getting metadata across all schemas
* Bug with no display of rowid in Identify results fixed;
* Some fixes relating to where clause application in geometry validation.
* Fixes bug with scrollbars on view/layer tree not working.
* Problem with the spatial networks fixed. Actions for spatial networks can now only be done in the
  schema of the current user, as it could happen that a user opens the tree for another schema that
  has the same network as in the user's schema. Dropping a drops only the network of the current connected user.
* Recordset "find sdo_geometry cell" code has been modified so that it now appears only if a suitable geometry object is
  in a recordset.  Please note that there is a bug in SQL Developer (2.1 and 3.0) that causes SQL Developer to not
  register a change in selection from a single cell to a whole row when one left clicks at the left-most "row number"
  column that is not part of the SELECT statements user columns, as a short cut to selecting a whole row.  It appears
  that this is a SQL Developer bug so nothing can be done about it until it is fixed. To select a whole row, select all
  cells in the row.
* Copy to clipboard of SDO_GEOMETRY with M and Z values forgot has extraneous "," at the end.
* Column based colouring of markers fixed
* Bunch of performance improvements.
* Plus (happily) others that I can't remember!If you find any bugs register a bug report at our website.
If you want to help with testing, contact us at our website.
regards
Simon

Answer 1

Hi buddy,
> Yes, it is: Intel site not Toshiba, I'm sorry!
No problem but not its clear what we talk about ;)
> why Toshiba don't pretest latest driver and I must install it on my own risk? The last update is from 1,5 years ago...
I think because Tecra A10 is older model and there is already a successor on the market, Tecra A11.
Well, dont worry about this. Usually the Intel drivers also work. I have tested this on my Satellite U400 and its running with Intel display driver. No problems so installation is worth a try.
Please send some feedback after Intel display driver installation, its really interesting! :)