Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Bill Tate]

I've been looking for any excuse to build an application in Ada -
specifically a GIS program with a business analysis focus (the
commercial alternatives are expensive, do not fit my particular needs
& they are not written in Ada - the latter being a non-starter with me
anyway).

In reviewing available packages, I'm curious as to whether anyone has
any thoughts on the suitability of using GtkAda for the graphical user
interface?

In some cases, we could be talking about an interface capable of
handling 1000's of geometric primitive "objects" on the screen at any
one time, e.g., all points/lines/arcs that define a zip code(s)
boundary.  The req's of the application do not involve complex 3D
geometric calculations - this is purely a 2-D visual presentation. The
graphic primitives to be used to represent real-world geographic
features will be limited to simple geometric types (points, polygons,
arcs, etc.).  It is also necessary to handle the data in a "layered"
fashion (i.e., a different layer for each type of geographic feature
represented.

As far as I can determine thus far, the GtkAda.Canvas package offers
some nice features already built-in and the overall GtkAda package
appears to be quite comprehensive.  My preference is avoid going the
OpenGL route if at all possible.

If anyone has any thoughts, recommendation and/or reservations, etc.,
I would greatly welcome any feedback.  Thanks in advance,

Bill

Re: Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Eric G. Miller]

In <cb4ba455.0209051616.16c7028e@posting.google.com>, Bill Tate wrote:

> I've been looking for any excuse to build an application in Ada -
> specifically a GIS program with a business analysis focus (the
> commercial alternatives are expensive, do not fit my particular needs
> & they are not written in Ada - the latter being a non-starter with me
> anyway).

Why would you care if the software was written in Ada?  It's not likely
any of the vendors would give you access to their source anyway.

> In reviewing available packages, I'm curious as to whether anyone has
> any thoughts on the suitability of using GtkAda for the graphical user
> interface?

It could probably do the task...
 
> As far as I can determine thus far, the GtkAda.Canvas package offers
> some nice features already built-in and the overall GtkAda package
> appears to be quite comprehensive.  My preference is avoid going the
> OpenGL route if at all possible.

You probably wouldn't want to use a Canvas widget; Or at least, if you did,
you'd probably want to draw to a bitmap buffer and only use the canvas
functionality for selections and editing type work and possibly for dividing
up the frame for layouts.  Trying to keep all that data + overhead in memory
would kill your program.
 
> If anyone has any thoughts, recommendation and/or reservations, etc.,
> I would greatly welcome any feedback.  Thanks in advance,

Good Luck.  GIS's are fairly complex creatures.  BTW: what "business analyst"
functionality are you looking for that commercial vendors are not providing?

Re: Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Anders Wirzenius]

Eric G. Miller wrote in message ...
>Why would you care if the software was written in Ada?  It's not likely
>any of the vendors would give you access to their source anyway.

Because that is one way to promote Ada. Perhaps that makes the vendors
review their production technology, who knows. You may also require Ada as a
guarantee that the product quality passes some quality level requirements,
regardless of how excessive the vendor's product testing procedures are. If
you buy a wedding ring you probably want it to be of gold regardless of what
coating and finishing the ring has?

Anders Wirzenius

Re: Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Reinert Korsnes]

Anders Wirzenius wrote:

> 
> Eric G. Miller wrote in message ...
>>Why would you care if the software was written in Ada?  It's not likely
>>any of the vendors would give you access to their source anyway.
> 
> Because that is one way to promote Ada. Perhaps that makes the vendors
> review their production technology, who knows. You may also require Ada as
> a guarantee that the product quality passes some quality level
> requirements, regardless of how excessive the vendor's product testing
> procedures are. If you buy a wedding ring you probably want it to be of
> gold regardless of what coating and finishing the ring has?

And when it comes to food production - many (?) want to know
how the product is produced.  Tests of the final product is
not good enough.  Some exclusive food can include information 
about what farm the food come from etc.  Quality can come inn
from the earliest stage in a production process (and is not anly
a result from the final tests).

:-)

reinert  

> 
> Anders Wirzenius

Re: Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Bill Tate]

"Eric G. Miller" <egm2@jps-nospam.net> wrote in message 
 
> Why would you care if the software was written in Ada?  It's not likely
> any of the vendors would give you access to their source anyway.

No but they do often have api's however, and their api's are written
for VB, C++, C or other languages that support MS COM (ugh).  And I
happen to like Ada :>)

> Good Luck.  GIS's are fairly complex creatures.  

After 6 years of GIS development, I'm keenly aware of what you speak
but I also don't intend tackle the entire mountain either.

> BTW: what "business analyst" functionality are you looking for that >commercial vendors are not providing?

Let me clarify my earlier comment.  Its not that there aren't any
vendors that provide business analyst functionality.  Rather its what
I define as required functionality often gets split across multiple
add-ons or product extensions.  Taken in whole, this tends to become
an expensive proposition.  What I'm doing is entirely a non-commercial
effort but important to do my work.

In terms of an example.  The one most pertinent to me entails
combining GIS functionality with modeling/analysis techniques such as
neural networks and Kohonen's Self-Organizing Map, in particular.  The
latter being a useful method for clustering & visualizing highly
dimensional data; data which often happens to have an important
geographic context to it.  The combination of both is useful to me
because of how I tend to organize, analyze, and visualize information.

Re: Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Jeffrey Creem]

"Bill Tate" <tatebll@aol.com> wrote in message
news:cb4ba455.0209060509.3c27cb7e@posting.google.com...
> "Eric G. Miller" <egm2@jps-nospam.net> wrote in message
>
> > Why would you care if the software was written in Ada?  It's not likely
> > any of the vendors would give you access to their source anyway.
>
> No but they do often have api's however, and their api's are written
> for VB, C++, C or other languages that support MS COM (ugh).  And I
> happen to like Ada :>)
>

Umm... Ada supports MS COM just fine (www.adapower.com/com)
I've used that to interface to other tools such as Rational ClearQuest....

Re: Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Eric G. Miller]

In <cb4ba455.0209060509.3c27cb7e@posting.google.com>, Bill Tate wrote:

> "Eric G. Miller" <egm2@jps-nospam.net> wrote in message 

>> Good Luck.  GIS's are fairly complex creatures.  
> 
> After 6 years of GIS development, I'm keenly aware of what you speak
> but I also don't intend tackle the entire mountain either.

Well, I'd be interested to see where you go with the idea.  I've
spent a little time working on GRASS (mostly ferreting out obscure bugs
in a hacked up 20+ year old C code base).  Part of that experience
has led me to Ada, though I must admit I haven't gone too far with it -
managed to write a line segment intersector and haven't returned to it...

> Let me clarify my earlier comment.  Its not that there aren't any
> vendors that provide business analyst functionality.  Rather its what
> I define as required functionality often gets split across multiple
> add-ons or product extensions.  Taken in whole, this tends to become
> an expensive proposition.  What I'm doing is entirely a non-commercial
> effort but important to do my work.

Yes, this "extension" business is clearly a way to fsck customers out
of there money.  I've been distinctly unimpressed with the amount of
functionality actually present in some of these $1500 dollar "extensions".

> In terms of an example.  The one most pertinent to me entails
> combining GIS functionality with modeling/analysis techniques such as
> neural networks and Kohonen's Self-Organizing Map, in particular. 

Hmmm, must research this Kohonen thing...

Re: Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Bill Tate]

"Jeffrey Creem" <jeff@thecreems.com> wrote in message news:<11ae9.164300
> Umm... Ada supports MS COM just fine (www.adapower.com/com)
> I've used that to interface to other tools such as Rational ClearQuest....

yeah I know about AdaCOM.  I just prefer not to tie myself to specific
platform and a single vendor's technology.

Re: Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Bill Tate]

"Eric G. Miller" <egm2@jps-nospam.net> wrote in message news:<pan.2002.09.07.02.48.16.824029.5706@jps-nospam.net>...

> Well, I'd be interested to see where you go with the idea.  I've
> spent a little time working on GRASS (mostly ferreting out obscure bugs
> in a hacked up 20+ year old C code base).  Part of that experience
> has led me to Ada, though I must admit I haven't gone too far with it -
> managed to write a line segment intersector and haven't returned to it...

Sure - just getting started with the req's definition.  GRASS led me
to the same conclusion wrt Ada - GIS & Ada seemed to be a really good
match.  More important to me is being able to maintain the damn thing
over time - C++ allows me to get into way too much trouble :>)

> Hmmm, must research this Kohonen thing...

I would recommend that to anyone including NN's, fuzzy logic and
genetic algorithms.  Pretty powerful techniques with many practical
applications across just about every discipline I can think of.

Re: Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen]

tatebll@aol.com (Bill Tate) writes:

> I've been looking for any excuse to build an application in Ada -
> specifically a GIS program with a business analysis focus (the
> commercial alternatives are expensive, do not fit my particular needs
> & they are not written in Ada - the latter being a non-starter with me
> anyway).

<snip>

> As far as I can determine thus far, the GtkAda.Canvas package offers
> some nice features already built-in and the overall GtkAda package
> appears to be quite comprehensive.  My preference is avoid going the
> OpenGL route if at all possible.
> 

What's wrong with OpenGL? It has an Ada interface, and is well
supported both on Windows and Unix. With a modern graphics card, the
performance is very good.

> If anyone has any thoughts, recommendation and/or reservations, etc.,
> I would greatly welcome any feedback.  Thanks in advance,
> 
> Bill

Re: Recommendations:GIS program in Ada

[Bill Tate]

Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen <oleh@vlinux.voxelvision.no> wrote in message news:<7vwupva9on.fsf@vlinux.voxelvision.no>...

> What's wrong with OpenGL? It has an Ada interface, and is well
> supported both on Windows and Unix. With a modern graphics card, the
> performance is very good.

Oh no, I don't have any technical reservations with OpenGL.  I may go
that route regardless but right now I'm exploring possible
alternatives.  My personal bias would be to keep as much of this in
Ada as possible.