A Spatial Odyssey

Last week the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) put out a paper titled 'Future trends in geospatial information management: the five to ten year vision' ( available here  as PDF). Now I must confess prior to reading the document and seeing tweets from people I knew who appeared to be attending a session of this group in Qatar I hadn't heard of the UN-GGIM. However it appears to be a group that's been set up in recognition that geospatial information can assist with development of nations; national and region initiatives on geospatial information need to be better coordinated and that 'developed' countries can lend a hand and resources to the benefit of less-developed countries. Some laudable aims there certainly, but anyway I digress slightly from the future-trends document itself... Overall I think the document is a well-constructed ‘snapshot’ on the current main trends in geoinformation. Whils...

Today I had the pleasure of chairing the UKOUG Oracle Spatial SIG at Oracle's London City Office. I'm on the Committee for the SIG and use the technology a lot in my day to day work, so my view is biased, but I do like the SIG as I always leave it with a better idea of the Oracle Spatial technology roadmap and invariably have at least one 'take-home' idea or tit-bit which I have gleamed from one of the other presenters, sharing their experiences of Spatial.   Happily today was no exception. Albert Godfrind (part of the Oracle Spatial development team) gave a great insight into the likely Spatial enhancements in the 12c R1 database release (the 'c' if you are wondering stands for 'cloud' which was obviously one of the key directions announced at Oracle Openworld earlier this month) all delivered in his wonderfully no-frills Gallic style. 12c is currently in 'beta 2' so will probably not hit the shelves until at least mid-2013. In summary...