GIS solutions based on SQL Anywhere?

[Former Member]

Hello

I'm new here and looking for a GIS (Geographic Information System) that can process the spatial data from SQL AAnywhere 12(SA). At the moment I'm working with MapGuide Open Source (MGOS).

MGOS has FDO providers for a lot of databases (e.g. MySQLOracle, PostGIS, SQL Server, ..) but not for SA. As a temporarily solution all spatial data are stored in MySQL and all the others in SA. But this can't be for the future.

As far as I know only Quantum GIS (qgis) supports SA. However qgis is a typical desktop solution and I need GIS also in the web and on mobile phones. Btw I have done a lot of work for my MGOS application.

The best would be a FDO provider for SA. Particularly with regards not only to MGOS, but also a lot of Autodesk products working with FDO.

But also other GIS solutions based on SA would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Peter

[huber1]

Hi Peter

I am working with QGIS but was not aware that it supports SQL Anywhere. We are using PostgreSQL/PostGIS together with QGIS. As we are also using SQL Anywhere, I am very interested to use SA with QGIS. In QGIS, I used the Add PostGIS Layer menu to connect to Postgres. How can I connect QGIS to a SA database? Thanks and regards, Robert

QGIS 1.7.4 OS X Lion 10.7.3 Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server 10.6.8

[Former Member]

Hi Robert,

I tested QGIS 1.7.4-Wroclaw (btw. it's a nice town with very friendly people:) on XP. In the extension manager I found the SA extension. It worked fine with some test data. But only in the local desktop version, not as WMS layer on the QGIS server. Maybe I'm to stupid.

Best regards - Peter

[huber1]

Hi Peter

I get this error connecting to our SA server:

The SQL Anywhere C API library (libdbcapi.so) was not found. Check that client files for SQL Anywhere 12 or higher have been installed, and that the installation directory is listed in your PATH.

Any idea?

Regards, Robert

[Former Member]

Hi Robert,

sorry, no idea, I have only windows and there is no such library. can the users group help?

http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/Quantum-GIS-User-f4125267.html

Best regards - Peter

[Former Member]

Hi Robert,

You need to install SQL Anywhere 12 (at least the client tools) on the machine that is running QGIS so that it can load the dbcapi library, which should have the name "dbcapi.dll" (Windows), "libdbcapi.so" (unix), or "libdbcapi.dylib" (Mac; the QGIS error dialogue is incorrectly printing the unix-specific name, even though it is trying to load the Mac-specific name). Note that it requires the same bitness for this library as your QGIS binary.

I've tested on Windows and Linux, not Mac. However, from my reading of the loading code it should work if you ensure that either 1. the directory containing the dbcapi library (e.g. "/opt/sqlanywhere12/bin32") is listed in LD_LIBRARY_PATH; or 2. the variable SQLANY_API_DLL is set to the full path of the library (e.g., "/opt/sqlanywhere12/bin32/libdbcapi.dylib")

You can examine the loading code for yourself within the method sqlany_initialize_interface() of file "sacapidll.c" , which is shipped with SA12 in the sdk directory, and also contributed to the QGIS repository under the path src/providers/sqlanywhere/sqlanywhereconnection/sacapi.

Hope that helps, Dave

[huber1]

Hi Dave

Sorry for the delay. In QGIS there are buttons to add a PostGIS or SpatiaLite Layer for example, but not for SQL Anywhere. Could you give a hint how you connected to SQL Anywhere?

Thanks a lot, Robert

[Former Member]

At the moment, QGIS is the only publicly-available provider for SA (that I am aware of). However, we currently have in-house prototypes for providers for both the (GDAL)OGR and Geotools open-source libraries. The current status of those providers is that their development is completed, but we are awaiting internal approval to publish the source (via a contribution back to their respective open-source projects).

We have minimally tested the OGR provider with both QGIS and MapServer. We have minimally tested the Geotools provider with both uDig and GeoServer. We haven't tried FDO, but once we publish our SA-OGR provider you should be able to get MGOS working via the FDO-OGR bridge.

Thanks for your question; I will see what I can do about expediting our publishing of these providers.

Dave DeHaan SQL Anywhere Query Processing Team

[Former Member]

Hello Dave,

thank you very much for your quick response!

... but once we publish our SA-OGR provider you should be able to get MGOS working via the FDO-OGR bridge....

This sounds hopeful. Is there a schedule for the apporval? If it would be in the next several months, we could break the investigation of other databases/GIS. The imagination of storing all data in one SA dadatbase makes me happy.

Best regards

Peter

[Former Member]

Hi Peter,

I wish I could promise a schedule, but I simply can't predict when the requisite approvals will be granted. I've forwarded the information that there are customers waiting on this, with the hope that it will speed up the process.

Sorry, Dave

[Former Member]

Hi David,

I very much appreciate your effort. Could you send us a beta version for testing? We are application developers for SA and Autodesk since many years. If necessary we would sign nondisclosure and send back feedbacks.

Thanks, Peter