As you know, the lack of cross-format compatibility can be extremely frustrating. I have handled projects where the zip code boundaries were in ArcView shape format, the counties were in MapInfo format and the CAD files were in .dwg format. And those were easy ones!

Most of us use software that comes from the company that produced a particular file format in order to read the data. This is fine if you have a software library in your office. Most of us don’t, and it can get pretty expensive to buy a company’s software just to view its files.

Sometimes I improvise. I have used the MapInfo add-on in Excel to see MapInfo data, for example. ArcView shape files are among the easiest to view because of the various software tools available for reading them. Those tools include ArcExplorer and BusinessMap, which range from free to $129.95.

When I was at Intergraph, I could use GeoMedia, but most of the time I didn’t need to see all the file types at the same time in the same map view. Setting up dataservers is an option, but it is not as easy as just opening a file. Eventually, I became aware that there were components (OCXs) out there that actually could open files in several formats. Since my OCX discovery, life has gotten a lot easier. Just ask my son.

My primary programming resource is my 14-year-old son, Hal Jr., who manages to help out the “old man” in between band practice, the track team, the usual homework load and going to Izzy’s with his buddies for a bagel.

This spring, I saw a terrific OCX from Blue Marble. It’s called GeoObjects. It is so fast that even Hal Jr. is impressed.

Jeff Cole, president of BlueMarble, had been on my OCX panel at this year’s Business Geographics conference. As part of his 12-minute presentation, Jeff built an application on the fly using GeoObjects.

The speed and ease of use that is engineered into GeoObjects is no mistake. While we were setting up the OCX panel, Jeff described the philosophy for his products, which is to provide his customers with software that makes it easy and fast to build an application. As an example of how fast and easy it can be, my son had my GeoObjects multi-format viewer built the first time in less than two hours. Last night, Hal Jr. did it again on my laptop in about a half hour.

GeoObjects also works on the Web. In less than three hours my son had it working for a show-and-tell example at Intergraph. It read four file formats, created thematic maps, and showed attributes from selected features. Most of that three hours was spent loading Internet Explorer 5.0, not creating the application.

Now it is fair to say that Hal Jr. didn’t exactly start cold on the BlueMarble OCX. This summer he built a data viewer using GeoObjects as part of a Wessex loading program. It was really cool, because it let you view the data before loading it. It was also fast and almost transparent to the user. The majority of my son’s time was spent not in making the OCX go, but in setting up the data so the user didn’t do anything but select options and then view what was selected. Unfortunately, you won’t get to see that ease of use in current Wessex products.

Very possibly, you won’t have a need to see files in several different formats. But I’ll bet that whatever you are doing, it could be done in a simpler, more elegant way with a good OCX component. What makes them neat is that most are royalty free and they can provide some terrific point solutions.

Just to give you an idea of the market for OCX components, consider that BlueMarble has 80,000 users world wide, and Blue Marble is just one mapping component provider. All of the major mapping software companies have OCX components available as well. In addition to BlueMarble, ESRI, MapInfo and Intergraph, there are also some very cool tools from Chicago Map, Pepperwhite and a number of others. Check them out. They are sure to make your life just a little bit easier.