We are happy to announce that MapInfo Pro v2023.1 will be released later this week.
Data is growing by the minute. Snowflake Data Cloud is leading the charge as the new data storage of choice.
To help users extract the most value from the spatial data all while reaping the benefits provided by the modern cloud, MapInfo Pro can now open DBMS Tables from Snowflake, push down queries to Snowflake, and visualize the result on a map.
Besides support for Snowflake, this release also includes a major change in how we work with spatial databases. The Map Catalog is now optionally. MapInfo Pro can now detect spatial data in tables without these being preregistered in the MapInfo Map Catalog in the database.
If you look in the MapInfo Marketplace, you will also see that we have added a couple of new tools and upgraded some existing tools.
We will review the changes in this article. Next week, we will discuss Snowflake Support in more depth.
Happy #MapInfoMonday!
Getting Access to MapInfo Pro v2023.1
If you want to try out or upgrade your existing installation to the new release of MapInfo Pro, you can find the installers on the MapInfo Pro v2023.1 Download page.
Please note that until we release the full release, you will find an Early Release of MapInfo Pro v2023.1 on the website above. The Early release only contains the English language for the new features.
On this website, you also find a link to the Release Notes.
Improvements to the Select DBMS Tables to Open dialog
We have made several improvements to the Select DBMS Tables to Open dialog.
The Search box lets you filter tables by name via the text that you enter. This makes it easy to find a table in a long list of tables.
The Location button and Aggregation button will open dialogs helping you to build spatial join queries and aggregation queries. Currently, this is only supported on Snowflake. More details to come in a later article.
The tooltip for each table shows the row count, the spatial type if found, and if the table is registered in the Map Catalog.
The tooltip will also show any custom SQL statement that has been created for the table. In the image below, you can see an example of an aggregating SQL statement created for Snowflake.
- Interactive - MapInfo Pro will collect details about the table and present these in the Make DBMS Table Mappable dialog for the user to make potential changes and decide where to save the settings.
- Automatic: MapInfo Pro will collect details about the table and use these to make the table mappable. The settings will be saved in the metadata section of the TAB file.
- No: MapInfo Pro will not make the table mappable and will open the table as attribute data.
If you enable the Suggestions for Large Table toggle the Large Table Suggestion dialog will appear if you try to open a table with many records. This limit can be set via the MapInfo Pro config file. This has been put in place to stop you from accidentally opening a table with millions of records.
Automatically Detect Spatial DBMS Tables
MapInfo Pro can now automatically detect spatial data in your DBMS tables. This is done when we load the list of tables in the Select DBMS Tables to Open dialog.
When you hold the cursor over a table in the Select DBMS Tables to Open dialog, it will show details about the table. This includes the number of records, the spatial type, and if the table is registered in the Map Catalog.
We also inspect the table for spatial data if you query the database tables via the SQL Window. Again, the tables are inspected when the list of tables is loaded into the Table List in the SQL Window
We still support and recommend having the MapInfo MapCatalog in the database. This will make it easier for MapInfo Pro to work out the spatial data type for tables and it also allows you to set a default style to use when opening the table.
DBMS Select in the SQL Window
The final improvement I want to highlight in this article is the ability to push queries to the database from the SQL Window and visualize the result in a map or browser.
You can build several SQL queries via the improved and new dialogs discussed above. But maybe you want to build a query that isn't supported via the dialog. In that case, I will refer you to the new DBMS Select tab in the SQL Window.
Maybe you already know that you can use the SQL Window to run SQL Select, Update, Delete, and Insert statements. You can also use it to build and run MapBasic and Python scripts.
And now, you can use it as an interface to run queries against your database, too.
You can use the dropdown lists in the SQL Window to select the connection and schema to use. Then you can select the table from the Table list and after that the columns from the selected table via the Column list.
Similarly to the Select DBMS Tables to Open dialog, you can also specify how you want to open the data: Linked or Live. As a bonus, you can also bring the data directly down into a Native/Native table.
Support for Snowflake
MapInfo Pro now supports Snowflake similarly to the way we support other spatial databases.
You connect to Snowflake using the Snowflake ODBC driver. Now you can open tables and views from the Snowflake database into MapInfo Pro.
You can open tables as linked or live like you can with other databases.
You can also edit the data and push the changes back up into Snowflake. As with other databases, MapInfo Pro requires a unique numerical key column for this to work.
As mentioned in this article, MapInfo Pro no longer requires the MapInfo Map Catalog for opening and mapping spatial data. The Map Catalog is now optional. This also goes for Snowflake.
All the additional improvements - when it comes to working with spatial databases - are also supported for Snowflake.
More details to come in the #MapInfoMonday article next week!
If you want to see the power of using MapInfo Pro in combination with Snowflake, check out this personalized demonstration: Using Snowflake from MapInfo Pro.
Improvements to MapBasic
We have made several improvements to MapBasic function for this new release. This is mostly around support for databases.
We also added support for getting the GeoHash and H3 levels for map windows. This is used when calculating the current level for the Geohash and H3 index.
These functions and statements have been improved:
Server Fetch statementRegister Table statementTableInfo functionServer Link Table statementSet Map statementMapperInfo function
New and Updated Tools in the MapInfo Marketplace
WindowHelper 4.10 has been updated with new capabilities that make your every day easier. We have added improved tools for Zoom Entire Map that ignore certain layer types like Tile Server layers and Zoom Entire Layer allowing you to zoom to the extent of several selected layers, not just one.
For the Layout, we added a tool that clears the selection and a tool that allows you to edit text in a dialog. That is useful when you have zoomed out and the text is written in a small font.
Many of the improvements to WindowHelper have been made to implement 9 specific suggestions from the Precisely Ideas where you can suggest improvements to MapInfo Pro and vote on existing suggestions.
Read more about WindowHelper.
The new Open Rasters with Style Override tool that you can find in the MapInfo Marketplace, lets you quickly open one or more raster files with predefined layer settings. The selected files will get added to the active map when you open them.
This is useful if you have many rasterized smaller maps that you use in your workflow.
Mark the Spot has been updated to also allow the use of the projection from the current mapper. This allows you to copy the center coordinate of the current map window or change the center coordinate.
The Precisely PSTYE product is available for the US and Canada. We will soon be releasing this product for the UK and Australia too.
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Peter Horsbøll Møller
Principal Presales Consultant | Distinguished Engineer
Precisely | Trust in Data
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