Safe Software Oracle 8i(TM) Spatial version 8.1.6 - press release
Safe Software announced on May 18 that its industry leading data access products FME and SpatialDirect now offer support for Oracle 8i™ Spatial version 8.1.6. This allows Safe’s products to take advantage of the improved performance and functionality of Oracle 8.1.6.

"Oracle 8i version 8.1.6 offers substantial improvements over 8.1.5 and our products get a significant performance boost by supporting it," said Dale Lutz, VP Product Development at Safe Software Inc.

Details available at www.safe.com

MapInfo 6.0 to ship in June - press release
On May 1, MapInfo Corporation announced they plan to commence shipping MapInfo 6.0 in June of this year. Significant Features Include: Improved Internet support - enables users to instantaneously link their maps to the Web. Taking advantage of the latest technology, the new HotLink tool allows users to click on any object on a map and automatically link to a specified URL

All New 3D Viewing Capabilities—includes interactive capabilities, such as freehand tilt and rotate. Users can create a 3D view of any map that contains a continuous thematic grid layer and drape the image of any other layers over the 3D surface.

Improved Printing Capabilities—includes extensive enhancements to printing support, including 24-bit color, Enhanced Metafile (EMF), optional transparency handling, color dithering method control and persistence of paper size and margins in workspaces.

Enhanced Data Access—improved data access capabilities support the 8.1.6 release of Oracle8i Spatial (as well as continued support of 8.1.5) and Microsoft Access 2000

"We anticipate that MapInfo Professional 6.0’s expanded capabilities and features coupled with the product’s ease of use will provide us with the most complete enterprise mapping solution available," said Mark Liebe, GIS architect for the City of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services

Details available at www.mapinfo.com/software/mapinfopro/

Also, see our feature, Mapinfo Professional v6.0 Goes 3D & Web Active

ESRI ARC/IMS 3 - press release
In the box ArcIMS includes HTML and Java clients plus supports a full suite of other ESRI software such as ArcExplorer, ArcPad, and other devices. ArcExplorer 3 (Java edition) is included with ArcIMS and will soon be available for free download from ESRI’s Web site at www.esri.com/arcexplorer. ArcIMS also features the ArcIMS Manager, a suite of Web pages to access all ArcIMS serverside functions and tools. Through the ArcIMS Manager, users follow simple instructions to author, design, publish, and administer Internet map services. Users can also develop custom desktop applications using the ArcIMS connector interface.

According to Product Manager Bernie Szukalski, ArcIMS is more than just an Internet mapping solution—it is a framework for distributing GIS capabilities via the Internet. “ArcIMS features unique capabilities for supporting a wide variety of clients, from lightweight DHTML clients all the way to full-featured GIS clients such as ArcView GIS 8.1 and ArcInfo 8.1. On the serverside, ArcIMS includes a wide variety of functionality, and future extensions will deliver even more GIS capabilities.” ESRI users who have licensed ArcView Internet Map Server (IMS) or MapObjects Internet Map Server (IMS) solutions may qualify for a free upgrade offer to ArcIMS 3.

Details available at www.esri.com/software/arcims

GRASS GIS 5 - press release
GRASS GIS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is a Geographical Information System (GIS) with raster, topological vector, image processing, and graphics production functionality that operates in the UNIX environment through a graphical user interface and shell in X-Windows. It is released under GNU GPL. The popular freeware GIS is now beta testing release 5. GRASS 5.x represents the first major change in GRASS functionality in several years, with the most notable change being support for floating point and null values. GRASS also now has a new and much easier to use windows interface based on Tcl/Tk. Additionally a new multiple attribute sites format is implemented, a new three dimensional raster format grid3 (voxel format) and first library functions for the GRASS DateTime Library.

Details available at http://www.baylor.edu/~grass/grass5/