Manifold WMS + ArcGIS Explorer = Train Wreck

UPDATE:

After a bit more time and reading, I have come to a different conclusion.

Please see my next post “Manifold IMS Redux”.

I still have no intention of using Manifold IMS as an image server. However, it very well may get the nod for feature data. I’ll have a better idea next week as I pit it against some other options.

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Manifold’s IMS is not an unmitigated disaster.

So to be fair the fault is not with AGX at all. It is 100% with Manifold Me.

The reason we bought Manifold was to have a GIS in which to create nice maps of our large datasets in an easy way and serve them out to the web. While there were plenty of warnings that Manifold’s website was full of hyperbole & BS, I choose not to heed them.

According to the Manifold System 7 website:

Format’s supported includes MrSIDs.

• Well we now know that turned out to be completely false. It supports using them only if they are of a fairly small area as it uncompresses and rewrites files to an actually supported format. This is MUCH slower when using them in a map than taking the time to convert these files to a fully supported format such as ECW, jpg2k, etc. I chose to make them ECW’s to serve out through Manifold’s Image Server or WMS. This is a no go as well.

Manifold IMS delivers blistering hot performance

Only if you think grass growing & paint drying are lightining quick, would I agree with the statement above.

While the performance may be a bit better if you are using a RDBM backend, It is HORRIBLE when using shapefiles imported (not linked but actually imported) into Manifold & saved as a .MAP file.

I was trying to serve out 2 different Manifold projects and neither one worked. One contained 256 quarter quad ECW files (~1.4GB .map file) and was to act as an image server. Niether the WMS or Manifold Image Server protocals working in AGX, Manifold, or the default asp.net web page viewer. The next one was a subset of my large multicounty project using only Travis county. Two of the featuresets in this project were rather large (~300k features), but all the rest were small. The project also contained no imagery. It was ~500mb .map file. AGX hooked up to the WMS I created for this project, but then crashed waiting for the WMS to respond to requests. The default asp.net web page created by the export process took ~10 min to respond to each request and drew very incomplete features or often none at all.

I’m sure that Manifold excels in some respect somewhere, but I haven’t found it yet. I’ve been much more impressed with UDig & QGIS as alternate GIS platforms to ArcGIS. As for the server side of things, I’m going to give UMN Mapserver and Mapguide OpenSource a good try. If I can get either of them working, then I’ll little or no use for Manifold any more. I’m really sorry we wasted our money on it. I would have much rather spent our $1,200 on something else.