April 2010 Archives

Once again, we'll be attending this international Aviation conference hosted by the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)  in Washington.

It's a great event, and if you're involved with Aviation it's definitely worth the trip. Find out more here: ttp://www.aixm.aero/public/standard_page/2010_05_aixm_met.html

Last year, we unveiled our OWS-6 test-bed, and you can read about it here: http://www.snowflakesoftware.com/markets/aviation/solution.htm

 Worldwide, common and accurate situational awareness

In the space of a year, we've been working on several projects within the aeronautical industry.  With more air traffic than ever, natural and man-made hazards challenging the skies every day and the ongoing barriers of legacy ‘silo’ systems; the aspiration to increase capacity and safety through interoperable, standards based data exchange continues to pose several challenges. The move towards worldwide, common and accurate situational awareness has never been more relevant. 

Snowflake  continues to play its part in the efforts to make this a reality and we'll be hostings regular demonstrations at our exhibition stand, showing you exactly how you can achieve it.

Join us. Visit our stand and listen to our keynote

Meet up with Debbie Wilson and Ian Painter, our industry experts and challenge them with your questions. Additionally, on day three of the event, you can hear Debbie and Ian present their most recent work on OWS-7 during the keynote.

As part of the OWS-7 overall presentation, Debbie and Ian will be demonstrating our groundbreaking WFS-T for AIXM.

Where

Washington Plaza Hotel, Washington DC, USA

When

Tuesday 4 - Thursday 6 May 2010

If you can't make it and you'd like to find out more about our support for Aviation and how we can help you enable AIM, take a look at our website: www.snowflakesoftware.com/aviation/ or get in touch info@snowflakesoftware.com.

Melissa Burns | Marketing Manager | www.twitter.com/sflakesoftware | melissa.burns@snowflakesoftware.com

Yesterday saw the first of the GeoDATA 2010 tour dates (a series of free, geo-information based seminars), held in Croke Park, Dublin.

Over the weekend, I was following the news avidly, hoping our pre-booked flights to Dublin wouldn't be cancelled. But unfortunately, along with the disappointment of many travellers, we found out on Tuesday (the day we were due to fly) that our flights were cancelled. Eeek!

With all the hard work and preparation put in by both the team here at Snowflake, all the other GeoDATA partners and the event organisers themselves, it would certainly be a crushing defeat not to attend.

Ian Painter and I were due to attend and we were sorely looking forward to meeting all the delegates. With over 80 booked, we didn't want to let them down either.

Video, Skype and Twitter - nothing can stop us

With a bit of creative thinking and the help of some modern technology, Ian and I worked away to make sure that Snowflake would still be able to attend - if not in person, via some kind of live link up (reminiscent of a Terry Wogan style link up to the Eurovision voters).

So, with a live video recording of our seminar keynote: 'Open Data: Changing The Way We Work' (thanks to Ian for working so hard on the Tuesday to make sure this happened) , a live video conferencing link up with a little bit of help from Skype, and feedback via Twitter using the #geodata hashtag - we were on a roll.

And at this point, I feel I must thank and give praise to the conference organisers, Training4GIS, namely Alun Jones and Fiona Cocks who worked so hard to make sure the show still went on, despite all the challenges.

The delegates weren't disappointed.

 Onward to England and Wales

The delegates' feedback on the day was great, with the majority of the post event evaluation forms saying:

          '....more of the same next year please...'.

 If you attended, why not let us know what you thought?

The next three roadshows are tightly packed in May:

• May 11 - Cardiff, Angel Hotel
• May 13 - Liverpool, Aintree Racecourse
• May 20 - London, Emirates Stadium

With a further two coming up later in the year:

• November 10 - Glasgow, Trades Hall
• November 16 - Belfast, Hastings Stormont Hotel.

For more information about these free GeoDATA seminars, take a look at the website: http://www.citiesrevealed.com/events/geodata10/ and register for an event near you, today.

But hurry, because it's free, places at the events are limited so book early to avoid disappointment.

We look forward to seeing you at the next one.

Melissa Burns | Marketing Manager | melissa.burns@snowflakesoftware.com | www.twitter.com/sflakesoftware 

Today, most of the UK and Northern Europe woke up to the news that an Icelandic Volcano had errupted causing a plume of volcanic ash to rise to 55,000ft high: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8621407.stm.

Timely, decisive airspace information.

Whilst it won't affect air qualty on the ground, at that height, it can affect aircraft engines. Nats ( the UK Air Traffic Control Service) and Eurocontrol (the European air safety body) have worked to close down UK airspace causing many flghts to be delayed or cancelled for much of the day. The Met Office are serving specific weather updates to help with predictions on how the weather systems will carry the smoke plumes and which areas might be affected.

Here at Snowflake, we're pretty excited about this.

We're currently involved in the development of the next generation of air traffic control systems through the OGC's OWS-7 testbed where our GO Publisher product is being used to send notifications about flight path obstructions including volcanic ash plumes and extreme weather. GO Publisher serves data to allow air traffic controllers, airlines and pilots to make rapid and well informed decisions about diversions and alternative flight plans.

Aviation Conference

What's more, we'll be unveiling the findings at an international Aviation Conference - The AIXM/WXXM event in Washington on 4-6 May - http://www.aixm.aero/public/standard_page/2010_05_aixm_met.html.

 Come and see us at the exhibition.

Aviation expertise

We've been working in the Aviation industry to provide specific solutions for many data exchange and interoperability challenges. Read more about it on our Aviation webpages: http://www.snowflakesoftware.com/markets/aviation/index.htm

Take a look and get yours today

• Read more about the work we did on the OGC OWS-6 Testbed: http://www.snowflakesoftware.com/markets/aviation/solution.htm
• Find out about our work in the Aviation arena: http://www.snowflakesoftware.com/markets/aviation/index.htm
• Trial and download the core engine behind the sucess - GO Publisher: http://www.snowflakesoftware.com/products/gopublisher/eval.htm
• Keep up to date with the Twitter #ashtag

Melissa Burns | Marketing Manager | www.twitter.com/sflakesoftware

Here at Snowflake, we've been blessed with the brains of several industry experts.  You can meet them on one of the many training courses we offer:

 INSPIRE Training - Book by 30 April for £100 discount at training@snowflakesoftware.com

Hosted by our very own Debbie Wilson. Debbie's background in INSPIRE extends back to her days working on the UK Location Programme at DEFRA. She's hot on the INSPIRE framework and can help you learn the basics right through to implementation. She'll also give you tips on what's needed and what isn't, so INSPIRE doesn't have to be a challenge, and you can realise the benefits.

• Next course date: 27 April 2010
• Visit theINSPIRE Essentials training pages for more information
• Take a look at the course overview

 GML/XML Training - Book by 30 April for £100 discount at training@snowflakesoftware.com

With the movement in the industry towards Open Data, there's never been a better time to learn about these data exchange standards. Our very own Ballal Joglekar will explain the fundamentals around XML and GML - working with profiles, creating application schemas as well as giving you some great tips on how to work with these standards to open your data.

Ballal also runs our highly popular 'Hands On' courses which take the theory into practice. A mainly practical session, you'll work through several exercises in our training suite to build your knowledge and confidence around Model Driven Architectures and UML, Geometry, Feature Relationships, Web Feature Services and GML Simple Features profiles.

• Next course date: 28 April (Fundamentals), 29-30 April (Hands On)
• Visit the XML and GML training pages for more information
• Take a look at the XML andGML course overviews

GO Loader/GO Publisher training - Book by 30 April for £100 discount at training@snowflakesoftware.com

We also run training courses for our key products GO Loader and GO Publisher so you can find out some user tips and get your hands dirty to start making the most of them straight away. For more information about our product related course, contact our training manager at training@snowflakesoftware.com.

Flexibility around your needs

You can get trained right here at our HQ in Southampton, or if you have more bespoke needs, why not get in touch to discuss the option of having us visit you at the location of your choice? For all of your training needs, contact training@snowflakesoftware.com.

Prices start from £390 (+ VAT) per person, and with the extension of our £100 discount, why not make the most of it and book your training course today?

Melissa Burns | Marketing Manager | melissa.burns@snowflakesoftware.com

GeoDATA Dublin: 21 April 2010 

•  Hear from key data specialists all under one roof
•  Be inspired by real world applications
• Source the latest geospatial data and services
• Build a business case for data investment
• Receive advice through the showcase exhibition

• 12 April -  Dublin
• 11 May -  Cardiff
• 13 May - Liverpool
• 20 May - London
• 9 November - Glasgow
• 18 November - Belfast

 Melissa Burns | Marketing manager | melissa.burns@snowflakesoftware.com

With the arrival of OS Open Data I thought I'd dust off my old skool data skills in an attempt to create the first derived dataset from OS Open Data. Using our GO Publisher product I mashed OS Code-Point Open with the WOEIDs of Yahoo! GeoPlanet Data and created a derived product in KML , here's the detail ...

1) First things first, make sure that historic open data licence is covered in the header ...

2) Convert to KML (something a little more internet friendly than the default CSV)

3) Sort out the spacing on the Code-Point Open Post Code making it single spaced. 

4) Convert the coordinate system to WGS84. Note: Where the Positional Quality value of 90 (geometry unknown - usually 0.0, 0.0) there is NO Point geometry. You'll notice that the Post Code value is in the kml:address tag and so if you display in Google Earth it will geocode any missing geometry on the fly for you.

5) Put all the Code-Point Open properties in the kml:ExtendedData tag

6) Process the Post Code to create a new Out Code property also in kml:ExtendedData

7) The cool bit ... Cross reference the post code to Yahoo! GeoPlanet Place postcode, attaching woeid and parentWoeid to the original OS Code-Point Open data.

All credit goes out to our GO Publisher Community Edition product which let me do all of this so quickly. Here's some screenshots and there's some sample data for comment at the end of the post.

You can access the first cut sample data here:

http://www.snowflakesoftware.com/webservices/opendata/cpoww-sample1.kmz

Just click on the link and it should open up in Google Earth, if not open Google Earth first then click on the link.

I'll put this sample out for comment, if people are happy with it I'll create a national set for you all.

Enjoy

Ian

Backward compatibility

Here at Snowflake we pride ourselves in the backwards compatiblity of our products. To coincide with the launch of OS OpenData we asked our engineers to back port our GML Viewer to the ZX80 platform and get it to support the new free BoundaryLine data. We downloaded the data this morning, converted it to GML and loaded it in the viewer on the ZX80. You can see the results opposite.

Viewing GML

If you haven't got the GML viewer yet, you can download it for free from our GML pages.

The ZX80 is sadly no longer popular with our current user community so don't expect to see an installer on our support site - but drop us a line if you would like a cassette.

Eddie Curtis | Chief Technology Officer | eddie.curtis@snowflakesoftware.com