Hi everyone,

We've had a lot of requests for video demos and presentations, so we're going to start putting a few of those on the site. The first one is at http://www.manifold.net/video/mfdsql08.wmv and will probably be the video we contribute to Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 partners site (note the emphatic focus on Microsoft products in that video!).

Manifold arranged for professional production by the world experts in this sort of thing for Manifold System, gisadvisor.com, with the well-known voice talent and expert commentary of Dr. Arthur Lembo of Salisbury University. Art and his students have been doing a lot of work in spatial DBMS so that's definitely the place to go for a good overview.

Well, anyway, in addition to announcing the above I'd like to solicit suggestions for additional demo videos we might put on the site. These are not intended to be training videos (we like the gisadvisor.com presentations for that) but instead are intended as marketing materials. What would you like to see demo'd that you think would really give someone unfamiliar with Manifold a "wow!" moment, a real interest in buying?

We are going to do analogous versions of the first demo using Oracle Spatial and probably even PostGIS. Got to be agnostic, after all! :-) And, we'll almost certainly do the Montara Mountain CUDA demo from the NVIDIA CUDA topic. Besides that, what would you recommend?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

For my clients, who typically are in the "very large" enterprise GIS category, the wow factor is being able to link or import to Oracle Spatial and/or SDE, local file based formats and use Manifold as the spatial integration, editing and viewing application. Add a couple of image servers like Google and Virutal Earth and that usually blows them away. In my prepared AVI demos, I try and show how easy it is and how the Manifold interface and workflow just makes sense, rather then making it all look complicated, which is how we sold GIS software and services in the old days.

Connecting with all the major databases is great, but I think users would really like to see how relatively easy it is to display the data in nice looking forms. How about an example showing a form that displays some data, a map, and a picture. This could add some variety to one of the videos your planning for the other databases or in be its own video.

Great suggestions! Please keep them coming.

In the meantime, here's one more showing how to store a large image into SQL Server 2008:

http://www.manifold.net/video/mfdsqlimages.wmv

Customization. Some step-by-steps for adding custom palettes, projections, styles, themes, layouts and add-in script tool bar buttons.

This is an area of Manifold that is incredibly powerful, but very overwhelming for new users.

Regarding external databases my vote goes to PostgreSQL/PostGIS. Today's economic turmoil and budget restrictions may, and probably will, force some large private and public organizations from all the world to move to open source databases.

I'm for other open source databases. I read that MySQL also supports spatial databases.

http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/4.1/gis-with-mysql.html

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/spatial-extensions.html

I'd like to see more information or perhaps how to videos on MySQL and PostGIS.

Microsoft may be angry with me when I say this but, I was able to duplicate everything exactly except I used MySQL instead. It work perfectly. I've been using MySQL for a couple years now and have connected manifold with MySQL since Manifold 6.0. I have never had a problem with MySQL.

Sounds a bit risky to offer a PostGIS presentation for a SQL Server 2008 showcase.

I think Manifolds capabilities in multiuser editing and conflict solving would make for another interesting DB application.

BTW Art showed moving a Lable bound to a linked drawing. He didn't show the lable after the refresh of the drawing :-) We really should have better (i.e. persistant) control over lable position.

Is it possible to edit the volume of the sound track? Art comes rather soft-spoken compared to the ESRI video and others.

Klause,

The sound was fine when I recorded it - but, I was using headphones which work nicely. Also, speakers on a computer work well, but I noticed that my laptop speakers were not so good. I'll send off a new video with louder volume. I'm going away on vacation, and will try to do that before I leave. Otherwise, I'll send it out next week.

thanks for the feedback.

art

All very nice videos!! Especially the large image one.

A "wow" video in my area that would impress enterprise Arc... users would be a video that would illustrate how Manifold, in combination with databases(preferably PostgreSQL/PostGIS or other open source), and field devices that would show the use of field devices(small computers w manifold,GPS) that would enter and edit central database info that could be further reviewed and edited at the central location. This may be beyond the scope of what you had in mind but is the capability that is needed to penetrate the existing Arc world in a relatively small city. The real example is a small city that stores it's survey data in a central database and has several mobile crews in the field who are simultaneously entering and editing survey data. This is presently performed(probably not all to well) by ESRI products. Appreciate anyones thoughts on this.

My company has a library of "training" videos that demonstrate how to collect data in the field on a PDA or smartphone (using our product of course which is based on a SQL CE engine) and synchronize the data back to a central database. We are less concerned about field GIS (i.e we are not trying to teach our users how to manipulate existing "shape file" data) and more concerned about field data. The video library then shows how this data can then be used in a decision support context by integrating Manifold. We have been steadily bringing previous non GIS users into the spatial analysis space where they had previously seen GIS technology as out of reach. Are you looking for industry specific examples? Are you looking for "how easy was that" examples?

Great job guys!

One thing that might be nice would also be multi-user editing (w/ some conflicts thrown in). Just a thought. I agree w/ dgallen that showing how Manifold can be used w/ ESRI's SDE might be an idea as well. Not that I like SDE or anything, but we do get the question every now and then from our ESRI based clients that are looking to move, but want to do it slowly and SDE would be the last thing to go for various reasons.

Cheers.

--------- JBurn

anyone willing to open up their IP address to SDE for me for around an hour or two so I can connect to it? If so, email me. I'd also like to test out some things, as I think editing in SDE might be a problem for Manifold due to the rules that SDE maintains, but I haven't tested it.

Great suggestions! These can be anything, by the way, since they are for Manifold's site, so no problem showing off the ability to utilize a variety of technologies such as PostGIS, etc.

By the way, there's a new video up on the site as of earlier today:

http://www.manifold.net/video/Supercomputer_GIS.wmv

This is the talk on parallel processors and NVIDIA CUDA complete with the Montara Mountain demo that runs 1 minute without CUDA and 2 seconds with CUDA.

The sound on the new video sounds like the narrator is down a hollow log......bit echoey.....

It also gets very quiet towards the end, I can only hear the commentary with the volume at maximum and my ear close to the speaker.

I think they had the wrong file up there initially. I checked today and the right one is there.

I would really like to see some ‘real world’ examples of manifold that demonstrate a few of the features and workflows such as pasting between component types, linking, SQL, decision support and then publishing the results.

This is not the best example, but a hydrological like the following might be within the scope of a video and serves to demonstrate the sort of thing I mean.

1. Get some terrain data from internet - select an area of interest and download some contour/height point data as shapefiles or tables (I get shapefiles from http://www.nztopoonline.linz.govt.nz/website/nzgd2000topo/viewer.htm).
2. Import drawing data. (An opportunity to show the breadth of import options).
3. Assign projection (Brief discussion here Assign/Change plenty of supported projections/datum, distortion grids and custom parameter support).
4. Paste the height points data in to the contour drawing (An opportunity to demonstrate manifold’s support for points/lines/polygons within a single drawing).
5. Copy and paste the data as a surface (An opportunity to show demonstrate the ease of workflow and the different interpolators).
6. Not quite sure how to link this in, but it would be great to show linking of a proportion of the created surface using SQL as I have always been impressed by this!
7. Create watersheds and streams for the surface making the point that this can be done via SQL or by the Surface tools Dialog.
8. Demonstrate attributes assigned by watershed/stream network tools and their uses.
9. Demonstrate how easy it is in Manifold to use script and a query to perform an upstream trace using AdamW’s example in thread http://69.17.46.171/forum/t32967.30#33380
10. Perhaps set up a couple of ViewBots to show how the can be used to dynamically calculate flow accumulation etc from upstream selections.
11. Export the streams/ watersheds and terrain data to KMZ and display in Google Earth.

i would like to watch video that show

-1 that same aim could be obtain using many way , manual , tool (implemented to not use script like spatialoverlay ,trnasfert heigth ? ) , sql , script, automate .

-2 that manifold deal with many format and how same format /file extension could be import in many way to be use in many different way ( gps import directly in table or drawing ....)

Tried the link again, and it sounds the same, like the narrator is down a hollow log......also tried from the website itself and it seems to be the same one...

... but the sceenplay is an excellent introduction to CUDA, better than NVIDIAs videos TMO. Impressive, how long 59 seconds feel.

For the Manifold site I agree the fan of DBs supported exactly the same way in Manifold is worthwhile to show - especially if you include the interoperability with existing infrastructure and programs based on DB-native geometry types or the power of server based views (in DB language) and the transparency using the server commandline in the clients database console importing aggregated results.

Out of idle curiosity I tried the 5x5 slope calculation on my 32bit system which does not have a CUDA card. It took only 11 seconds which surprised me somewhat.

Dell Precision 490

4GB Ram

Windows XP

Very interesting... are you using the same data set as in the demo?

I think so file SAN1CATD.DDF from the Montara Mountain dataset on the Manifold DVD (SAN1 ELEVATION MONTARA MOUNTAIN, CA-ELEVATION) with the following Transform dialogue

slope([SAN1 ELEVATION MONTARA MOUNTAIN, CA-ELEVATION], 2)

Surface Transform: 11.650 sec

OK, but that's only a 2x2 computation matrix, which is a much simpler computation than that used in the demo, which is a 5x5 computation.

For a comparison, here's what my notebook computer requires (not using CUDA) in seconds for 2x2, 3x3 and 5x5 matrices:

slope(s,2): 14.064

slope(s,3): 24.615

slope(s,5): 55.751

... this is a 64-bit machine with a slower processor and slow disk drive with the above timings done immediately one after the other so no doubt there was some slight benefit from RAM caching in Windows, etc., for the 3x3 and 5x5 computations.

For an illustration of what the formulae are and how it is that a 5x5 matrix takes longer, see the supercomputer gis video, which discusses that and gives the montara demo using a 5x5 matrix.

Thanks for the clarification Dimitri. It was a case of me speed reading the manual though to me the entry below still looks like I should use a parameter of 2 for a 5x5 window:

SlopeHeight(s, g) (was: Slope)

SlopeHeight(s, x, y)

SlopeHeight(s, x, y, w)

Returns the slope of s at the specified location. The location is either the centroid of a geom or a pair of XY coordinates. Passing the w parameter computes slope over a window of specified size (1 for 3x3, 2 for 5x5, etc). Surface Tools only.

Evidently however, I didn’t pay enough attention to the parameter being used in the video and assumed that it must have been a 2.

Great demonstration, I have showed it to a few people at work who were mightily impressedOne other thing Re. suggestions for the video's ... It would be nice to have something like the CUDA demonstration but without all the historical perspective/background. While I was really interested to watch and learn from this, the non-Manifolder's just wanted to see the CUDA demonstration and I could find no way to fast forward to this bit. It would be great therefore to have some demos (perhaps of all sorts of things) with only a short preamble.

Great suggestion! Let's see how fast that can get done (should be pretty quick given the editing software used...)

I'll also check into the parameter to see how that should be written better in the manual.

Danb, I am pretty sure you are correct. the 1 is for 3x3, 2 for 5x5, etc. There is no such thing as a 2x2 kernal. If there were, which pixel would be the middle value? So, the s,5 that Dimitri used is probably something like a 9x9.

Art, thanks for the clarification. I was thinking about it afterwards and 2x2 made no sense.

Same here. I was going to ask today for a clarification but forgot to follow through (doh!).

By the way, a shortened video skipping the Moore's Law stuff has been posted. Great suggestion!

yeah, I think the video will have to be updated to reflect that a 5x5 is really defined as (s,2), rather than (s,5)

If the video gets updated again, you might add a short discussion about how to find out if the listener's existing computer can handle an upgrade to one of the new CUDA cards.

I'd suggest a demo of Enterprise Editing on something like a road or parcel layer using simultaneous edits.

I think the ability to avoid ArcEdit licenses for multi-user shops would be a BIG selling point.