[fdo-users] MapInfo provider

[Kenneth Skovhede, GEOGRAF A/S]

That depends on what you want to accomplish.

I find that speed is very good, even better than SDF when using TAB files.
All the data I have tested with renders fine, but date/time columns are 
not supported.

But, the OGR only supports a geometry and a single logical expression.
It would be cool to have it support arbitrary FDO expressions.
If that is your target, I belive some of the other providers have much 
of the logic for this,
and that it would be a better solution than a pure MI provider.

For now TAB files are read-only, because OGR/MITAB does not support it, 
but at least some
work has been done in this regards:
http://bugzilla.maptools.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1859

Regards, Kenneth Skovhede, GEOGRAF A/S



Jackie Ng skrev:
> Hi All,
>
> Something that's been brewing in the back of my mind is whether it is feasible to write an FDO provider for MapInfo. 
>
> Now the reason I say feasible is because:
>
> a) The OGR provider already supports MapInfo files. I could be duplicating effort here, but then again this could be a SHP or PostGIS situation where OGR can support it, but there is already a specialized provider for it.
>
> b) The only libraries I know of that can read/write MapInfo file are MITAB and OGR, but reading more about MITAB I find that its is based on the OGR library, so this is going back to point a)
>
> We have a lot of potential clients (MapInfo users) here in Australia, where a dedicated MapInfo FDO provider could really sway them over. Having to work with the lowest common denominator behaviour of the OGR provider is kind of cumbersome though. 
>
> I guess my question is: Is it worth writing a MapInfo-only FDO provider when the OGR provider already exists that can adequately serve this purpose?
>
> - Jackie
>