MapInfo Pro

Currently, it is all stored as seperate .tab files, scattered across multiple computers and a network drive. I've been made responsible for getting a handle on all the data and synchronizing it so that team members can be working on the most up-to-date copies of various tables. I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, and I'd appreciate being pointed in the right direction!

Jon,

I have had a lot of success sharing spatial data using the PostGIS/PostGres database. It is an open source solution that works directly from MapInfo Pro and supports both polygon and point spatial data. You will need to download and install PostGis, see http://postgis.net/, install the database drivers and you will then be able to access data directly from Pro. The MapInfo Pro install includes a utility called Easyloader that will help you load the .TAB files into PostGIS.

There is a lot more to learn about PostGIS, but hopefully this has put you on the right track.

I would be remiss in not mentioning other spatial databases that are supported, like Oracle & MS Sql Server.

Good luck with your project,

Brian

Thank you very much for the reply Brian. I will have to try to familiarize myself with PostGIS. That being said, my company does currently use SQL Server for other applications, and I was considering looking in to using that for the database as well. Any information you could share about your experience with that platform would be appreciated.

Have you checked out this presentation?

https://li360.pitneybowes.com/s/question/0D58000003ndZvqCAE/how-to-use-mssql-postgresql-for-mapinfo-spatial-database-versioning-when-multiple-users-are-accessing-the-database

Looks like it may make sense for us to have an article written on this subject.

If your organisation has licenced ms sql server already you should consider the risks associated with open source before ?investing time in PostGIS. If the org stopped licencing sql server then there is also the free version which has very few differences except db size. Open source seems attractive but consider the risks and hidden costs. If you have Microsoft licenced products you probably have a support contract also so if it falls over you have somewhere to go to.

Here's a comprehensive presentation to get you started using databases with MapInfo Pro.

https://www.slideshare.net/peterhorsbollmoller/mapinfo-professional-120-and-sql-server-2008.

The presentation is based on MapInfo Pro 12.0, the 32 bit version of EasyLoader and SQL Server 2008.

There has been some changes to the software since I created the presentation:

• Pro now allows you to open multiple tables from a database connection
• Pro allows you to create NativeX/MapInfo Extended Native tables which can hold more than 2 GB per file.
• Remember to create you database connections as 64 bit, not 32 bit. I'm assuming that you are using a 64 bit version of MapInfo Pro
• EasyLoader has a brand new look and feel - much better interface!
• SQL Server is now at version 2016 but besides that it's still much the same.

But besides these changes, much of the content from the presentation is still valid.

I would second Martin. If you have access to SQL Server already, go with that. It also has to benefit of allowing you to use Windows Authentication when accessing the database (~ you won't have to enter user name and password when connecting).

EasyLoader within MapInfo pro can upload any MapInfo table to Microsoft SQL server. The advantage of MS SQL is that a lot of other systems can read/write to the database. If you have software developers in your company they already know how to make applications that work with SQL server.