St Paul, Minnesota-based geographic information systems house Object/FX Corp, is targeting Smalltalk developers who want to enhance existing client-server applications in the services, utilities and government sector, with an embeddable system for displaying enterprise information in map, picture, table and schematic format, called SpatialWorks. The idea is that users see pictures of their information rather than just reading text. For example, a SpatialWorks-enhanced marketing application would show the locations of retail outlets and sales and market information in relation to the competition’s shops through drill-down of local, regional or worldwide maps. The company believes its key advantage over traditional geographic information systems providers, like Intergraph Corp plus the ‘GIS Lite’ brigade, such as Lotus Development Corp with Strategic Mapping Inc of Santa Clara, California, Microsoft Corp with MapInfo Corp and Oracle Multi-Dimension, is its ability to provide shared views of data across an organisation via multi-system object components. Traditional systems are expensive, stand-alone systems that are not integrated with corporate systems, the company said. GIS Lite, or desktop mapping products, are stand-alone desktop applications and, again, not integrated with corporate systems, and require significant training expenditure. Too hard, too big and too isolated, is the company’s view of offerings currently available.
Object Mapper
An Object Mapper represents existing relational data, such as customer address and key identification or facilities and operation information, in a spatial context – that is state, city, network, or schematic. The data is integrated into these views via maps, pictures and schematics either bundled with Object Mapper (currently US state, city and highway information), imported from other data sources, or bought as custom-built sets from Object/FX. The resulting objects are stored in an Object Design Inc database. We give the presentation and users give the behaviour, explains Object/FX. Support for Versant, Objectivity and Gemstone databases is under way. An application programming interface enables selections and queries to be reported to external applications using Dynamic Data Exchange, IPC or exchange of ASCII files, or Object Linking & Embedding from next year). The Mapper works with data stored in Oracle, Sybase, Informix, DB2 and Artbase databases, where Smalltalk interfaces exist. Version 3.0 of a Sp atialWorks executable, called Visual Companion Integrator’s Kit, is due in November and comes with an integrated Object Design Inc database and pre-defined query set. The company claims it can be embedded in any existing application, regardless of operating system, language or database. It costs from $1,000 for a single user licence, $1,300 for a client-server development licence, $2,500 per five client runtimes and $4,000 per server licence. A class library source-code product, the Visual Companion Object Developer’s Kit, enables developers to embed SpatialWorks components into ParcPlace Systems/Digitalk Inc Smalltalk applications and create their own query and selection sets; SpatialWorks is written in Smalltalk. It ships from next month priced at $3,000 for a single-user development licence, $4,500 for a client-server development licence, $2,500 for five client run-time licences and $4,000 per server, minus the bundled object database. Object/FX and its SpatialWorks environment are the open systems and Sma lltalk re-incarnations of a proprietary product from now- defunct geographic information systems software company, Ultimap, also of St Paul. Ultimap executives created Object/FX in 1993 after the original company ran out of cash. President Bruce Gilmore was president and chief executive of Ultimap; chairman and chief executive Kermit Stofer is also chief executive of Object/FX shareholder company Software Consolidations Inc. The company, which has collected an undisclosed amount of funding in two rounds of capitalisation, expects to do $2m this year
and $6m next. It has 22 employees and currently sells direct and through integrators like Andersen Consulting and Cap Gemini Sogeti SA, or specialists like Object Space and Object People. It has no OEM customers or value-added resellers to speak of, but is lining up European distributors to carry the products from next year. It is working to integrate Expersoft Corp’s PowerBroker Object Request Broker with SpatialWorks for a customer (PowerBroker has a Smalltalk i nterface) and plans an implementation using IBM Corp’s VisualAge Smalltalk environment.
