MapInfo 9.5

The geoblogosphere seems to be all a twitter (no relation to twitter) with the release of ArcGIS 9.3. I made the mistake of getting my knickers in a twist when 9.2 came out. I installed it wanting to try the new features, but unfortunately I used it to work on some project work when the rest of the office hadn't upgraded from 9.1 (or 9.0 in some cases). That was dumb on my part, so now if I happen to receive a copy, I don't think I'll upgrade till SP1 comes out. Though, sometimes service packs can lead to more headaches as I found with 9.2 sp3 and the loss of some of my python tools in the toolbox...weeeeee!

Anyway, all the talk around 9.3 has overshadowed the pending release of MapInfo 9.5. Its fairly obvious from my posts that I am primarily an ESRI user, and have given a fair share of MapInfo criticism. They must have heard the call (I'm certain I wield such influence), because it sounds like they have made some substantial changes. They are a little behind the times on some things, like the .NET MapBasic features. ESRI has had that for over a year now. I'm not too impressed by having support for MSSQL, because it sounds like everyone will. Although, I bet MapInfo won't require any extra extension to handle it. I am hopeful but very much doubt that there will be direct support in ArcGIS 9.3 without the need for ArcSDE. MapInfo should also add PostGIS support in my opinion. It seems to be gaining some commercial acceptance through Manifold, ArcSDE, zigGIS (also ArcGIS), etc...

I'm downloading an evaluation copy of 9.5. I can't test everything, but I read that they designed the interface with .NET, so I'm hoping it doesn't look like crayon on sandpaper anymore. I also hope they replaced workspaces with something more functional. I'll post my findings here.