Eve Kleiman, Principal Product Manager for Oracle Spatial in the Asia Pacific region, organized this User Group.A big thanks should be given to her, especially with her heavy workload.
The Time Delay
But let's look into this gap between the availability of the technology and the delay in the creation of a community around it.One consultant, in a discussion with me, typified the Oracle dilemma when he said that he was "still waiting for the Oracle Spatial wave to break." To be honest, this is part of the problem: everyone has been waiting for someone else to make the wave break.The other side is that the GIS community has been resistant to the technology; the wind has definitely been blowing offshore!
1.The Community.Oracle's background, so it seems to me, is making technology for Fortune 1000, etc.companies: its focus is on business customers, business applications, corporate profit and goals, not on individuals (their goals and aspirations).GIS software vendors have always been focused on enabling uptake via the individual.They've pushed to get universities involved, developed strong training courses, made users capable of showing what the technology can do (while still being reliant on business managers to implement the business changes required to leverage the technology), and made users feel that it is their technology.
Is it bottom up or top down? It is both.
A common theme of presenters at this conference was about taking the G out of GIS: the focus was definitely on the host business, its needs and profitability.And so it should.Yet, for me, Justin Lokitz summed up the dilemma when he talked about the Oracle Spatial team being a tightly knit community, united in their passion for the technology.Because, to be frank, geospatial data and processing is cool and exciting.Something people want to get passionate about!
So, how does Oracle integrate the top down with the bottom up?
2.Technology Accessibility.Before Oracle made its technology freely downloadable via its Technology Network portal (TechNet), access to Oracle technology was impossible for geospatial professionals.They could not download it, configure it, explore it.You needed to work for a business that had the Oracle Relational Database Management System (ORDBMS) installed.However, if you have ever worked for a business with an ORDBMS (doesn't matter whose) on a server, access was still difficult because the database administrator (DBA) had to be involved. (New ease of management functions at 10g are making Oracle easier to get up and running without having to go on a DBA course.)
Again, here is where the discontinuity occurs: the geospatial professional has always had access to the technology: they were/are the installers, configurers, managers of the spatial technology stack.It is this discontinuity that is at the heart of why the wave has not yet broken.
But so is the skill set of the individual geospatial professional.
3.The SQL Skill Set.The
famous paper,
"Why
not SQL!" by Max Egenhofer (published in the International
Journal of Geographical
Information Systems 6 (2): 71-85, 1992,) just might have convinced
vendors
and students (the community) that SQL was not a good language for
spatial data
management and access.Re-reading that paper, having used Oracle
Spatial (and
that great product, Manifold,) one sees how dated it is.(Egenhofer
himself
would probably admit this.) The practical reality is that SQL, while
not
perfect, is a language that really makes data access simple, logical
and easy.
I would even say that SQL is good enough for 95%+ of all our needs.
This needs
to be changed so that the wave will break: education service providers
(universities, etc.) need to plug this gap by going back to basic
database
theory and providing the framework for why databases are so important
(and
proprietary file formats, so loved by the geospatial vendors, are
ancient history!).
Even if we can do this, we hit the
value question.
4.Microsoft and Value.
Many people don't realize that
Oracle still has a lion's share of the Windows server DBMS market. Oracle is seen as an expensive product.But
GIS isn't cheap.So why is this argument used at all? I constantly hear
from
GIS people that SQLServer is better because it is free: it is bundled
with
Windows Server at no additional cost.But many don't realize that
Oracle
Workgroup server for Windows Server has a sub-$10,000 recommended
retail price,
and that every copy of the Oracle ORDBMS comes with spatial
capabilities at no
additional cost.(Eve reminded people of this in her opening!) On top
of this,
SQLServer has no spatial capabilities! So, to compare SQLServer with
Oracle
Spatial, one really needs to create an equation which is more like
this:
"SQLServer + GIS Vendor Spatial Data Access Product" = Oracle Spatial.
(Let's
compare apples with apples, please!) Whenever I mention this, the topic
of
conversation is normally changed.
However, perhaps it will only be
the entry of that provider
of ubiquitous user-centric software, Microsoft, into the SpatialDB
market with SQLServer
that will enable the individual geospatial professional to finally
realize what
a great product Oracle Spatial actually is.Then they will realize how
rich and
advanced the Oracle Spatial technology stack is.
And it was the richness of this
technology stack that Lokitz
so ably demonstrated.This was
reinforced by users who talked about their use of this technology.
Kleiman, to her credit, wanted users to be
frank about their experiences, hopes and aspirations.They didn't
disappoint.
And Lokitz, also to his credit, was frank about the technology.But it
isn't
hard to be frank about weaknesses when the product itself is so solid.
What the
Oracle Spatial team is doing inside the database is ground breaking.
Lokitz
likened this to being the lightning rod for all the issues with new
kernel
features because they are pushing the bounds more than any other
technology
within the server team.
The users know this.The users
spoke clearly and ably
about their experiences: from the self-professed GIS programmer (David
Jarrard)
from Department of Roads in Queensland who clearly showed how good the
technology was.He taught me a thing or two ‑ thanks mate! Or the
self-professed non-GIS programmer (Trevor Tracey-Patte) from Geoscience
Australia whose tips were frank and from the heart: he also explained
how they
use UNM MapServer in their portal to deliver mapping.The users clearly
wanted
to share what they learned so that others could learn.
Have you noticed something about these two examples?
Without
this User Group, Jarrard might have gone only to a MapInfo user
conference, and
Tracey-Patte to an open-source GIS/IT developer conference, and I for
one would
have missed the opportunity to have been enriched by their quite
different
experiences of using Oracle Spatial.
This, in the end, is the value of these User Group
meetings or conferences at large: the chance to network, to share,
complain and
to feel part of a greater group.And this chance to feel a part of a
greater
group is why we need more of these meetings.Database-centric
geospatial
professionals are at the cusp of the new wave that will break.
They need
to get together.For those of us who remember that the first ESRI User
Conference had fewer than 50 people attending, the chance to feel that
you are
not alone is worth more than anything else.
The attendees did participate in a
discussion about where to
go from here.I expressed my views, but afterwards, in writing this, I
actually
thought that non-Oracle Spatial users should be allowed to go just to
find out
what the fuss is all about!
Well done Kleiman and Lokitz. Oracle, if you are listening, please invest in us users so that we will invest in you.Finally, a big thanks to Ian Edwards from OpenSpatial who put so much effort into organizing the event.