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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Subject: | RE: GISList: ArcView vs MapInfo vs Manifold |
| Date: |
08/27/2002 09:59:04 AM |
| From: |
Quantitative Decisions |
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At 10:56 AM 8/22/02 -0400, McCann, Michael J. (Mike) wrote:
>Reading separate independent reviews of
>different software products allows an interested shopper to compare notes
>between different features in different software products.
Agreed. Reviews can be quite helpful. Here's one that has some claim of
independence, having been produced by groups of students in
GIS: http://sge.chez.tiscali.fr/sge1.htm . It compares ArcView 3.x to
MapInfo in four categories. (You will need to read French or be willing to
run these pages through one of those translators-cum-word manglers on the Web.)
> For example:
>
>Various Reviews
>http://software.geocomm.com/reviews/
>http://www.geoplace.com/gr/reviews/reviews.asp
>
>Maptitude Reviews
>http://www.maptitude.co.uk/GICaliperProfile.pdf
>http://www.geoplace.com/gw/2001/0501/0501qt.asp
>http://www.geoplace.com/ge/1999/0799/799gis.asp
>
>Mapinfo Reviews
>http://www.geoplace.com/gw/2001/0110/0110qt_1.asp
>
>Arcview 8.1ArcInfo Reviews
>http://www.spatialnews.com/features/arcview81/
>http://spatialnews.geocomm.com/features/arcinfo8notes.html
>
>MapPoint Reviews
>http://www.spatialnews.com/features/mappoint2002/
Some of these are far from "independent," but that's OK: most readers will
recognize geoplace.com as the home of GeoWorld, a well established and
reputable publication, and should be able to put the other organizations in
their proper categories vis-a-vis independent writing.
Many of these reviews are good and well worth reading, but as far as
ArcView vs. MapInfo vs Manifold vs. the World goes, they merely scratch the
surface and probably don't help the purchasing decision a whole lot.
If you really want a useful review and comparison of major GIS products,
you will need to invest one heck of a lot more time and resources in the
effort than any of these authors did. A fair review will require the
reviewer(s) either to be expert or to become nearly expert in all the
software being used, and to have a truly broad range of application
experience: otherwise, the review will reflect the reviewers' limitations,
prejudices, and interests more than it reflects the software's actual
capabilities. (The French review I cited above is obviously subject to
that limitation, too.) It will require many aspects of the software to be
exercised, tested, benchmarked, and compared along many dimensions:
capabilities, usability, use of computing resources, quality of output,
flexibility, cost, technical support, etc., etc.
Such reviews are routinely done in the software industry by organizations
dedicated to the task. To do the job well, they will typically take
several months and charge tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars (or else
attempt to recoup similar amounts by selling copies of their reports for
hundreds or thousands of dollars apiece). NSTL built its business on this
model, for example. I can think of no journalistic organization in the GIS
world that has those kinds of resources.
In the GIS business, I have concluded that the players who are content with
their market share of software (read: ESRI and perhaps MapInfo) have little
motivation to support a comprehensive independent review effort. It's a
little like the public presidential debates held in the US every four
years: the upstarts and third-party candidates have much to gain from the
public exposure and the front-runners have everything to lose.
I believe the likeliest mechanism by which thorough, independent reviews
and comparisons of GIS software could be made would be through the direct
support of a consortium of interested parties, including vendors of
competing software, willing to commit funds to the effort while
relinquishing all direct control or influence over the outcome. Any takers?
In the meantime, for insightful reviews that go at least a little bit
deeper into the software, check out Fredrick Limp's series of reviews in
GeoWorld (http://www.geoplace.com/gw/default.ASP#Department ). Limp has
been doing these for years and has an amazing capacity to cover a lot of
ground in a short time.
--Bill Huber
Quantitative Decisions
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