Ingres Db

The latest version of Ingres relational database now also includes support for geospatial data. GIS functions and spatial data types are included out-of-the-box (i.e. do not require additional plug-ins) and make it easy to enable web mapping. Ingres 10S supports spatial applications, such as Esri’s ArcGIS for Desktop and FME but also MapServer and GeoServer.

Ingres 10S is supported by other programming libraries including GDAL/OGR and GeoTools, allowing import, export and manipulation of vector data. Ingres 10S leverages the GEOS geometry and PROJ cartographic projection libraries for manipulating and transforming spatial data between dozens of geographic and planar co-ordinate systems.

Ingres 10S is an open source, enterprise grade database, not as popular as MySQL or PostgesSQL but, as the other options, can be downloaded and used for free. Ingres was first created as a research project at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1970s. Since the mid-1980s, Ingres has spawned a number of commercial database applications, including Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, NonStop SQL, but also open source PostgreSQL (which with PostGIS extension is the most popular open source spatial database).

University of Washington: Campus Map

Map of the Week: University of Washington Campus Map
Why we like it: A beautiful use of interactive custom tiles, custom info windows, and the Google Directions API for embedded walk/bike/drive directions. A great example of a highly customized Google Map.

The beginning of May marks the start of college graduation in many places around the world. When the day comes for long awaited college graduation ceremonies, finding the events on campus can be daunting for visiting family and friends. Just in time for spring graduation ceremonies, comes this great Google Map from the University of Washington. For a large school like the University of Washington that occupies over 500 buildings and over 20 million gross square feet of space, a good map is a must to help visitors and students alike find their way around.

What sets this map apart is the high level of customization, most notably the well designed, custom interactive tiles that highlight university buildings and points of interest. University buildings stand-out from the map in deep purple and display a custom InfoWindow with additional information when you click on them. For sharing convenience, each building has its shortened url.

Overall the map looks great responds quickly as you search around campus. Embedded into the map are walking/biking/driving directions that allows users to route in between buildings and point of interest.

Just in case you won’t be visiting the University of Washington in the near future, here are some other campus maps worth checking out: Northeastern University, UCSD Bus Map, and Universidad de Murcia. Also, the Google Developers Showcase has this and many more campus maps worth checking out.

 

The University of Central Florida 3D

As you certainly have seen by now, we love to show off awesome 3D buildings that our readers create. Recently we’ve shown you items such as the Evansville Central Library, the Costa Concordia and the Android statues at Google headquarters.

Today’s models come from Chris Sardinas at CS3Design. They’ve been working on modeling the campus of the University of Central Florida and they’re doing an amazing job with it.

One great example is the Health and Public Affairs Building, seen below. You can download it from the Google 3D Warehouse here.

health.jpg

Another excellent building is Colbourn Hall. This model already exists in Google Earth, though it’s fairly crude as you can see here:

colbourn-old.jpg

The new model from CS3Design looks far better!

colbourn-new.jpg

Many of their buildings are not yet in the default 3D layer in Google Earth, so they’ve put together a Warehouse collection to make it easy to find all of them.