James Fee GIS Blog

59 responses so far ↓

• 1 Sean Gillies // Aug 24, 2006 at 11:05 am

  Mention of Manifold. It’s like the Godwin’s Law of geospatial discussions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_law.

• 2 mapperz // Aug 24, 2006 at 11:51 am

  Yes, Manifold is useful, projects contain the data as well - so very portable.
  Good for loading lots of types of gis data and exporting it. Like a mini FME.
  WMS can be created from it (limited)
  Does struggle when a lot a data is in the project.
  Good for large scale mapping.
  Can be differcult for ‘esri’ users to get to grips with. Some function work like in AutoCAD.
  mapperz

• 3 glenn // Aug 24, 2006 at 1:55 pm

  well, it’s been knocked for years, generally because its so cheap. Its actually one of the best delas, but best kept secrets around. Very powerful, excellent developer and user community etc… dollar for dollar its a spectacular deal. Unlike most companies, manifold doesn’t advertise or buy banners etc… rather, they typically promote it via word of mouth of teh users and a very vocal founder, Dimitri.. no doubt you’ve run across emails fromm him on discussion lists in the past.

• 4 James Fee // Aug 24, 2006 at 2:02 pm

  oh I’ve heard about it for years, but unlike almost every other GIS platform out there, I’ve never even seen it run.

• 5 Cam W. // Aug 24, 2006 at 3:15 pm

  I can personally vouch that Manifold is a good product. The biggest knock against Manifold is the workflows are completely different when compared to ESRI products. As mapperz mentioned above it’s a little like CAD in the way it handles data. It’s slightly North American centric as support for European / Asian datums and transformations is lacking (but this may have been addressed in recent versions). Otherwise it’s pretty solid product.

  I’ve never understood their reluctance to offer free demo software. If they did that and got some professional marketing put together as apposed to their current web site and promotional material they wouldn’t be the secret they currently are. I tried to steer a company towards their products for a ‘ArcView lite’ type solution. Guess what scared them off? The website and marketing material. It reads like it was put together by a bunch of teenagers after they spend the afternoon polishing off a keg (shesh… I’m starting to feel old now). It just didn’t look like a professional product in the eyes of the client. Manifold is no GIS panacea. Just like ESRI products it has it’s strengths and weaknesses. While the people at Manifold have created a very good product they don’t now how or simply choose not to promote it effectively.

• 6 Mike // Aug 24, 2006 at 5:02 pm

  I have to agree with Cam W. The marketing for Manifold is downright scary. Who, exactly, are they trying to sell this to? It’s hard to imagine that many users wrote about their top ten features with language like this:

  http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/9650

  -mike

• 7 Chris C. // Aug 24, 2006 at 7:04 pm

  Well my post in the OS blog seems to have generated discussion on Manifold!

  I guess I’m pawn in the marketing machine of Manifold - they believe word of mouth between GIS professionals is one of best ways of promoting their product. I am not worried about pitching their product if it means some people save a lot wasted cash on overpriced GIS software, when there is a cheaper alternative.

  Want to see Manifold in action? Here’s a link to Cornell University download page that contains a video demonstrating Manifold’s SQL functionality:
  http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/2489

• 8 Chris C. // Aug 24, 2006 at 8:03 pm

  I always find it quite amusing how people who haven’t used Manifold become quite agressive in their dismissing of it, usually pointing out the ‘holier than thou attitude’ of Manifold’s website - without actually ever using the software.

  There must be some of you out there who spend thousands on ArcIMS etc., who have some spare pennies to shell out for a copy of Manifold and actually find out what it is capable of.

• 9 Chris Tweedie // Aug 24, 2006 at 8:24 pm

  Chris C: i think you will find the attitude in response to manifold is more directed at the lack of material to back up their claims.

  Word of mouth only gets you so far, but the general feeling i get is

  “Not another manifold user telling me how cheap it is”

  Show the public more demos, videos, papers … hell even proper, production sites that are using the IMS server for example … anything!

  ps. i have used manifold

• 10 Dimitri Rotow // Aug 24, 2006 at 10:57 pm

  Well, couldn’t resist joining in.

  First, I’m not the “founder” of manifold. I’m just a product manager and occasional spokesperson.

  Second, there is no marketing of Manifold in the conventional sense. We don’t do any, zip, not at all. No advertising, no marketing, no trade shows, none of that.

  Why not? We believe in the Darwinian force of having to live by word of mouth. If we can’t do well enough with that we don’t feel we are doing a good enough job delivering an honest product that does what our users want. And all we care about is what our users want.

  Free demos? That’s advertising (and surprisingly costly too) and we don’t spend anything on such programs. Plus, because we depend upon word of mouth we’re not interested in tire kickers. We only want people who have considered the matter to a sufficient degree (read the user manual, ask a colleague, etc) to be willing to venture the cost of a license, at least during our 30 day money-back guarantee. If people aren’t committed enough to do that, we don’t think they are committed enough to spend the time it takes to learn the program. That’s not weeks or months, but it is a few days of serious study. If people learn the program as opposed to stupidly pressing a few menu buttons and not being able to figure it out, well, they’ll know enough about it to respect it. Maybe it won’t be right for them (different people have different needs), but at least they’ll know enough about it to respect it.

  Regarding the web site, we don’t really bother to maintain it. There are several reasons why not. The first and most important is that we really don’t want to have any activities going on in the company except engineering. Everything else tends to take away mind share. Plus, the company has so much money flooding in that there’s no incentive to mess about with something that already works so well we have difficulty growing to match demand.

  Second, our focus is on people who care about the product. We don’t want to sell to people who buy on the basis of style, because those are not the people who can help us improve the product. Given our abject lack of marketing you really have to be into the product to find Manifold in the first place and then to decide to buy it. That’s what we want.

  So in any competition for resources between investing into growing the product or maintaining the web site, well, the web site always loses. Our idea of maintaining the web site is posting the latest edition of the user manual to it.

  All that will change, I suppose, as the company is growing very rapidly and our users are asking we break loose some attention for things other than pure product. So we’ll probably go “corporate” with the web site sometime in the future.

  But keep in mind the following: every dollar that gets spent by Manifold comes from a user. Right now, about 95 cents out of every dollar goes straight into making the product better. Once you become a user, that’s how you want your money to be spent. To take a recent example, both 7.00 and 7x were free upgrades for 6.50 licensees. That’s over 630 improvements, many of them big and astounding things like direct Oracle Spatial connection and multiuser editing, totally free.

  Once you become a user, you like that stuff. You don’t want your money being spent by Manifold on thick carpet or on advertising (be it ads, free demos or web sites) to recruit other customers. You want it spent on implementing your wishlist items and improving the product.

  Regards,

  Dimitri

• 11 Doug // Aug 24, 2006 at 11:00 pm

  Sometimes Manifold reminds me of Scientology. It would be nice to be able to try the product before shelling out money.

• 12 Cam W. // Aug 25, 2006 at 7:51 am

  Dimitri: While I understand you want to concentrate on development you are seriously throwing money away by not putting more into marketing. If you put 5% of your incoming revenue into marketing you would probably see double coming back in only a month or two.

  Free demos? That’s advertising (and surprisingly costly too) and we don’t spend anything on such programs. Plus, because we depend upon word of mouth we’re not interested in tire kickers.

  This makes no sense. Free demos would cost you nothing other than bandwidth fees and a weeks worth of time to write some code to time limit the demo. Will it be hacked and people use it for free? Absolutely it will, but the vast majority of those people would never have bought your product in the first place and therefore you aren’t loosing money. If you want word of mouth advertising then you want your product in front of as many people as possible. Will all of these people take the time to really understand the product? Of course not, but a lot of them will and your be seeing $250 from most of them when they return to buy the product.

  Like it or not your website is the public face of the product. Small business should be your primary target market and every company I’ve ever tried to sell Manifold to as a product solution was turned off by the website. I was flat out told “If this is how they engage prospective customers how badly do they support their current customers?”. After those experiences I gave up on Manifold and every now and again I go back to see if you’ve grown up. Only to be disappointed again to see you’re still producing a good product but you haven’t seen the light yet so to speak.

• 13 Lord Xenu // Aug 25, 2006 at 8:34 am

  Doug I heard that- watch out!

  j/k - couldn’t resist !

• 14 Doug // Aug 25, 2006 at 10:09 am

  In Soviet Russia, Manifold markets you!

  Ok, really couldn’t resist.

• 15 Doug // Aug 25, 2006 at 10:26 am

  Dimitri you might not want to admit this, but your company is seen as a joke and as the me-too be of the GIS world. Your attitude, spitefulness, and blatant disregard for the fact that other people do GIS with software that is not your own contributes to this impression.

  Now this may all be perception but your company has a MARKETING problem and maybe you could actually do something about that by spending on MARKETING so that people do not roll their eyes at the mention of your product. Spitefully telling off customers who are rather content with competitors products is not the way to go.

  If you believe in word of mouth advertising, then you need to make sure that the words coming out of people’s mouths are favorable to your company and one way to do that is to not force everyone into a lover xor hate relationship with your personality.

• 16 Dimitri Rotow // Aug 25, 2006 at 11:18 am

  Let me reply to two points:

  1. The belief that “free” demos are either a) free or b) nothing to lose.

  2. Doug’s comment (let’s take that first):

  “you might not want to admit this, but your company is seen as a joke and as the me-too be of the GIS world. Your attitude, spitefulness, and blatant disregard for the fact that other people do GIS with software that is not your own contributes to this impression.”

  I think here you are making the mistake of thinking that “GIS world” means only “ESRI users.” It turns out that ESRI is a big fish in the small legacy GIS pond, but they are essentially unknown in the mainstream. There’s no “me too” aspect of Manifold in the mainstream because in the mainstream it is ESRI that is unknown and we who introduce most people to GIS.

  There are, however, a significant percentage, perhaps as high as 20%, of traditional ESRI users who are extremely unhappy with ESRI. There is also some slightly higher percentage of traditional GIS users, be they Intergraph, MapInfo or some other constituency, who are also looking for newer, more cost effective and more modern software solutions to GIS. Those people often end up being our constituency as well.

  To the best of my knowledge, no one, not one person, who has actually used a recent Manifold edition such as 6.50, 7.00 or 7x considers it a “joke.” We do, on rare occasions, have returns but these are almost universally for one of two reasons:

  1. There is something highly specific the customer requires that the package, for all of its thousands of features, cannot do. or…

  2. The customer was looking for something like MapPoint or Streets and Trips and accidentally bought a full-bore GIS.

  But in neither of the above cases do people feel it is a “joke.” Instead, they universally understand they are in the presence of something that is one of the world’s largest, most complete and most sophisticated software applications.

  This thread reminds me of the DEC response when personal computers begain wiping out the minicomputer companies. Invariably, the minicomputer company response was to call them “toys”. They obviously didn’t know what they were talking about, because one of the hallmarks of mainstream personal computers rapidly became a much greater sophistication, in user interfaces, in hardware and in software, than the antique interfaces and technology featured in the last generation of minicomputers.

  I do grant you we project an artificially “wise guy” attitude. The reason we do that is to assist our users who encounter legacy GIS unawareness of progress in modern computing. ESRI has had its influence on many data sets that are out there on the Internet which new users may encounter. Those new users should be fairly informed in cases when something is indeed titanically stupid, for example, shapefile format, so they don’t waste any time wondering if they are doing something wrong.

  It helps our users who are new to GIS to understand that the ESRI stuff really is obsolete junk. We feel free to ridicule that as a competitive statement. If we upset a few die-hard ESRI users, so what? They’re not going to buy Manifold anyway, so why should we refrain from telling it like it is to our users? This ESRI request to “please be genteel and don’t tell the world we are raping customers with overpriced, technologically obsolete junk” may find a receptive audience in some die-hard ESRI users, but it tends to fall on deaf ears in the case of people who want to use modern, elite GIS software at mainstream prices.

  OK… about “free” demos. They are far from free and can indeed have a negative effect. Consider several factors:

  1. We think it is better to provide the real software than some limited “demo” version. This lets people try out the real, full-power software without limitations in their actual work environment.

  2. There are actually substantial costs to running a “free” program, such as the need to eliminate the possibility that “free” demo editions become a source for commercial software pirates. It’s interesting to note that almost all of the pirated versions of GIS software packages now available through Internet hacker sites originated in “free demo” versions. Since paying customers end up bearing the costs of all such anti-piracy programs, we prefer not to stick our paying customers with a higher cost in order to subsidize “free” demos to people who do not buy the product. Our first duty is to keep costs as low as possible for our paying customers.

  3. Not providing “free” demos avoids wasting resources on people who could not possibly afford the package. In other software product families where we do have free demo versions we can see that a major percentage of downloads of free demos go to IP addresses in regions such as Nigeria and Bulgaria where it is clear that the people who download the demo are not likely to be able to purchase the package. By eliminating tire kickers, we can focus resources on bona fide customers.

  4. From a sales perspective, charging first is a good way of screening out people who do not have the authority to purchase the package or who must work under inefficient procurement guidelines that raise costs for everyone. Our experience is that serious GIS users understand that the cost of the package at $245 is a very small amount of the cost of evaluating a different vendor, the cost of switching to a new vendor, or even the cost of adding a new tool to the toolkit of GIS packages in use. It’s far cheaper than attending even the cheapest user conference or GIS education seminar. Further, buying ten seats of Manifold can save an ESRI user over $140,000 over the cost of ten ArcGIS seats. Experience shows that people who don’t venture $245 to save $140,000 based on the recommendations of colleagues or elite GIS institutions like Cornell University usually have some problem in their procurement processes that prevents them from efficient buying. We can sympathize with frustrating procurement processes used in some organizations, but we do not want to subsidize them by transferring costs from customers who have efficient purchasing capability and who are able to venture $245 to save potentially very large sums.

  The latter point is particularly true. Guys who are real customers, who have real buying authority and who are not merely tire-kickers or out to justify why it is OK they just spent $50,000 on ESRI software when they could have spent less than $500 and done better with Manifold, well, such people don’t hesitate to pop $245.

  As for spending more on marketing (well, anything on marketing…) you’ll see that is a slippery slope. On the one hand our customers are very happy that 95% of their money (it is all the customers money) goes into making the product better for that customer. But at times people forget that it is not easy to run a company where 95% of the funds go to the customer’s benefit.

  They say things like, yes, that’s great, I like that and understand it but, could you please send your booth to this show, or place an ad there…. and right away it is clear they have not truly internalized that if 95% goes to the customer there is nothing, zero, left for other stuff.

  I personally have run very large marketing budgets. When I was a general manager at Intel I had about a $100 million budget, of which almost half was marketing. That’s a lot of power for marketing, especially when magnified by the leverage Intel has given its position in the market. So I know perfectly well how to spend money on marketing.

  What you find out very rapidly is that these things take on a life of their own. You end up hiring people to take care of that end of the business and then you hire more people to support them and then of course because you hire energetic people they do things that expand their programs and consume more mind share a greater percentage of resources and all the rest.

  And it is really not the determinative thing. People have gotten lazy and stupid in modern times and think that you can effect a paradigm shift through marketing. That’s not the case. No amount of marketing will put ESRI out of its misery if you don’t have the actual product capability. Conversely, real product capability in real technical depth, with real content at a very low price will indeed kill off the dinosaurs even absent any marketing.

  That is how personal computers killed off minicomputers, for example. It was the primitive, marketing-free growth of “clone” vendors like Everex, Gateway and Dell (none of which had any “marketing” to speak of, and all of which were dismissed as “toys” and “a joke” by the sleek minicomputer marketing guys) that eradicated DEC, Data General and the others. It was only after the new kids became the establishment that they went “corporate” in their marketing.

  Keep in mind, also, that our distinctive competitive advantage is to create better quality software that is more powerful at a faster rate and a much lower cost than our competitors. That’s our game and if we play it we win.

  Conversely, there is nothing structural about marketing per se that confers an advantage to Manifold. Dollars invested there don’t do anything decisive. That’s our competitors’ game, and if we play it their way we lose.

  And last but not least, even if there are ways for savvy, guerilla style types like us to figure out how to divert a few dollars into marketing for net gain, well, there is still the emotional reaction we have at manifold.net that doing so is betraying our existing users. We really do have fanatic loyalty to this notion that the money we put into development all comes from our customers and it is simply in our hands for a while held in trust until it can be invested into creating better GIS software. There is a purity to that notion that is very strong, impossible to compete with. If we keep doing that, we get to keep doing this forever for our customers’ benefit and for ours.

• 17 Doug // Aug 25, 2006 at 12:58 pm

  Ok, i’ll bite.

  “There are, however, a significant percentage, perhaps as high as 20%, of traditional ESRI users who are extremely unhappy with ESRI” Every company has unpappy users and every company needs to look at why they are unhappy and address this in future releases or by changing their corporate culture. Are you proposing that 100% of Manifold’s users are happy? If you do propose that, then do you expect us to believe you?

  “[users] universally understand they are in the presence of something that is one of the world’s largest, most complete and most sophisticated software applications” My God. Now Manifold gives chills to users whose presence it graces? I can see that my comparing your software to scientology was probably truer than I had intended.

  “This thread reminds me of the DEC response when personal computers…” Hey is that a red herring? Oooh OOh I know, ArcGIS Explorer probably has a smaller binary footprint than your software so I declare that your software is more DEC like than AGX and so therefore you are going to go under… then again why don’t we just discuss software. People don’t buy software because it reminds them of an old paradigm. People buy software because it enables them to get things done.

  “I do grant you we project an artificially “wise guy” attitude.” I don’t think it is artificial, I think you really do despise ESRI, MapInfo, Intergraph and all the ignorant, misgided, and deluded people who use their software as evidenced by the following statements:

  “It helps our users who are new to GIS to understand that the ESRI stuff really is obsolete junk.” Well I am sure it helps your religious converts to feel better about themselves. Meanwhile ESRI is supporting a 400 million feature topology for ordinance survey with hundreds of concurrent users. Obvously if this is obsolete junk then Manifold must have a customer somewhere who has a 4 billion feature topology managed by thousands of concurrent editors. Calling ESRI’s software junk is certainly bold, but bravado != usable feature. Perhaps you should be billing less time to browsing the web and spending more of your precious time engineering something that feature for feature makes ESRI obsolete.

  “please be genteel and don’t tell the world we are raping customers with overpriced, technologically obsolete junk” You must have interesting customers if they respond positively to statements like this. If Manifold is all that, then why don’t you hop into some competitive bids against ESRI? I am sure that the USGS, petroleum users, utility users, data maintainers, map builders, academics doing GIS work would like to have the best software out there. Hop in on some bids and win them on the basis of features, not arrogant bravado.

  And to demonstrate that ESRI software is “obsolete junk” you pull out…. shapefiles. Now it makes sense to me that you think of GIS as shapefiles considering that your website consistently compares Manifold to ArcGIS 3.2 and 8.0, ignoring the fact that ESRI is on 9.1 and soon releasing 9.2, (imagine how much you would scream in self-righteous anger if ESRI compared 9.2 to Manifold 4.0). The shapefile standard is over 15 years old and you should consider that ESRI has come up with something better to replace them, or perhaps your software is only superior when it compares itself to something that was written with a 386 CPU in mind. Shapefiles do have many limitations (e.g. 2GB maximum size), but like all standards you have to look at the time when they were considered. What was a 2GB limit when most machines had 16MB of Ram and a large hard drive was 200MB? Last time I checked, shapefiles were great for the day and the proof is that they became the de facto standard for sharing data. If ESRI thought that shapefiles and coverages were all that there was to GIS then they wouldn’t have made geodatabases, so please do us the favor of either comparing Manifold in its early 1990s form to ArcGIs 3.x or comparing manifold 7.x to 9.1/9.2. Apples to Apples comrade!

  Now in light of the fact that ESRI is “obsolete junk”, you have to wonder why so many people use it. I think your response would be that it is a conspiracy between ESRI and legacy GIS pond dwellers to entrench their interests. Why is ESRI software popular in education? Nothing more than cheap discounts. Why do people go to the ESRI user conference? They are but ignorant sheep. TO summarize your cogent toughts all I can say is http://objection.mrdictionary.net/go.php?n=887479

• 18 glenn // Aug 25, 2006 at 2:35 pm

  wow, and the thread continues… something else I just remembered… going back to Manifold.net 6 there was an interesting publication that compared Manifold to ArcGIS… Of particular interest is this document titled “How do I do that in ArcGIS/Manifold” - Edited by Arthur Lembo Jr. Cornell university, the document steps through 50 “classic” GIS tasks and compares the process in Manifold side-by-side with the same process in ArcGIS - more details on this here — http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/3006/

  It would be interesting to see an updated paper… maybe even throwing in a couple of more apps as well, although who has the time for that?

• 19 Doug // Aug 25, 2006 at 2:40 pm

  Hey Dimitri I went to your happy commune of a user forum and saw that you enjoy bitch slapping your users there too. The following excerpts are from your response to one of your own users emilio when he expressed that some forum posts of yours weren’t that nice and after he asked some questions about google earth integration.

  “Well, there you go, once again the laws of physics as regards conservation and symmetry have been proven correct… no doubt there is a symmetric distaste for your attitude from this forum as well. Symmetry is satisfied and distaste is conserved.” Nice- you recast karma as a law of physics. It takes a bold man to make karma a law of physics.

  “Seriously, if you find the attitude of people in this forum distasteful, you can show your disapproval most effectively by declining to grace this forum with your presence.” And with developers like this, who needs enemies? Or who wants to be a customer?

  “Now, regarding the image server interface: Anyone with a functioning forebrain can go back and read the relevant threads in this forum…” Clearly your customers who post to your forum lack a forebrain. That speaks volumes about Manifold users.

  “For those folks with insufficient technical skill to know how to use that little underlined “Search” link on the left hand margin of this page…” Again, a vote of confidence for the Manifold user base!

  “I realize that children and novices think that Google Earth was the first image server, but technically literate adults know that TerraServer came first by years…” Thanks so much for correcting us on that! Please beat us up some more, we like it!

  “Because of our close and deep relationship with Microsoft we knew we would have to do Virtual Earth even though it was not clear at the time exactly how Microsoft would implement Virtual Earth…” Translation: our soon to be paymasters told us to do this or they wouldn’t buy us out and so we did it anyway. Careful not to bite the hand that you hope will buy you out Dimitri! Don’t hop in bed with Oracle Spatial, We all know that Oracle is MapInfo’s beau and you wouldn’t want to make Bill angry with you!

  “There is no surprise there for people with experience in computational politics…” Hmm, must have missed computational politics in my comp sci courses. Or is computational politics a political science course?

  “In all fairness, I should admit that it was not Manifold that invented the notion of an API. Others came before in that regard, and so we stand on the shoulders of giants, etc., etc.. It is not even we who invented the idea of taking advantage of open source advocates’ willingness to spend endless amounts of time and energy making their own shoes…” Are you insulting Open source folks, or APIs?

  “So you see, emilio, that your implication that Manifold did anything other than follow the path of least resistance down a well-trod path pioneered by others, a path that simply and effectively solves maintenance problems while expanding user options, shows nothing more than you are utterly and completely ignorant of both the technology and the history of the matter at hand…” Translation: you hit it on the nail but we don’t want to talk about that when it is so much more fun to change the topic by making fun of you.

• 20 Dimitri Rotow // Aug 25, 2006 at 4:19 pm

  I see Doug has a vested interested in ESRI and I have raised his hackles by suggesting that ESRI is, indeed, obsolete junk. Good.

  Consider this:

  “please do us the favor of either comparing Manifold in its early 1990s form to ArcGIs 3.x or comparing manifold 7.x to 9.1/9.2. Apples to Apples comrade!”

  No problem. The latest ESRI offerings still suffer from weakness characteristic of the earlier offerings. A good example is shapefiles, which you are correct to point out are virtually Sumerian in origin. But if they are so terrible and outdated, why do they continue to be the logical underpinning of ESRI’s “geodatabase” format?

  That’s nothing more than shapefiles in MDB database form, and a good example of how ESRI not only perpetuates old-fashioned stuff from its own product line but also misses the point of newer Microsoft technology. It manages to combine the stupor of shapefiles with a database format particularly unsuited for multiuser work.

  See, for example, Microsoft’s own knowledge base article at

  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300216/en-us

  The more you know about mdb, the more you realize it is not a particularly astute choice. If they wanted a bulletproof, fast and free server in the Microsoft world they should have used the free SQL Server Express engine, not MDB.

  Manifold, in contrast, can work directly with robust, open geometry+ attribute formats storing in serious, big-time, totally reliable DBMS products like SQL Server, IBM DB2 and Oracle. In fact, Manifold even provides free, fully-licensed installations of SQL Server, DB2 and Oracle on the Manifold DVD.

  If you like, you can store geometry in those very high performance databases in a variety of proprietary or “open” forms, such as OGC WKB. For maximum performance, you can use Oracle Spatial storage if you have licensed Manifold Enterprise Edition ($395) or above. Note that the Oracle distribution provided for no additional charge by Manifold includes SDO_GEOMETRY. You get a direct, high performance link to the fastest enterprise DBMS storage of GIS geometry and attributes around, and you don’t need no ArcSDE “silo” to do it.

  I don’t think anyone familiar with the technology of the matter would claim that ArcGIS 9.2 with (let me pause to chuckle here..), ahem, geodatabase format storing shapefiles as mdb is remotely as sophisticated as using Oracle Call Interface to store true SDO_GEOMETRY within Oracle Spatial.

  The closer you look at the two systems the closer you see such important details. For example, ESRI has long referred to its topology overlay capabilities (cookie-cutting layers of some polygons with layers of other polygons and like transformations) as “a license to print money.

  That’s fine for them but their algorithms are remarkably limited and primitive, and you might not even realize how primitive until you can see how modern software can do it. For example, with ESRI you can’t have overlapping polygons or other pathologies. Manifold’s equivalent operations automatically deal with all that, can cut mixed points, lines and areas simultaneously and much more.

  Manifold’s spatial SQL is far better than anything ESRI has. See the spatial SQL demo at Cornell University at

  http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/2489

  for an example of the sort of things you cannot do in ESRI. For that matter, there is no neurofuzzy inferencing engine in ESRI, no “more like this” searching and the like made possible by fuzzy logic and neural networks. See the Decision Support System chapter in the Manifold user manual for more on that.

  I will say that while in general Manifold far exceeds the equivalent ESRI capabilities there is one area where I think ESRI continues to be significantly ahead of Manifold, and that is cartographic composition.

  If you look at the gallery at

  http://www.manifold.net/explore/screens/screens.html

  you can see some examples of exquisite cartography done with Manifold, but these I feel are much harder to do in Manifold than they are with some ESRI products. It can be done, but it takes longer and involves more hassles. In contrast, some simpler presentations (like those of interest in automated IMS settings) are easier in Manifold.

  That’s an area that Manifold has to improve. When we do (and we will in a few months or a year), that will be one more area where Manifold is better. Until then, ESRI is better in that area.

  It is amusing, by the way, that you raise editing of large features sets by the ordnance survey. We do indeed have customers who work with terabyte sized drawings with thousands of simultaneous users at a time. It’s not really a big deal as the magic is done within the Oracle cluster they use. Because we had the sense to leverage Oracle it’s no big deal for lots and lots of Manifold clients to connect and read/write/edit that data.

  By the way, if you are into big data then you must be embarrassed ESRI has not been able to produce either native 64-bit code or the ability to do multiprocessing with multi-core processors or multiple processor motherboards. Manifold 7x is AMD “4×4″ ready, so for all those true power users who will be installing dual-processor motherboards with eight 64-bit cores and running dozens of gigabytes of RAM, well, if they want to use all that 64-bit muscle they’d better use Manifold as ESRI is completely unable to take advantage of it.

  As for visiting the Manifold forum, yes, it is a highly active and unmoderated forum. If people want to see what manifold users think they can visit it for themselves at http://forum.manifold.net - if you want to see the thread that started the “top 10 thing” see for yourself what users wrote at

  http://forum.manifold.net/Site/Thread.aspx?id=26064&ti=632915152276600000

  Regards to all,

  Dimitri

• 21 Dimitri Rotow // Aug 25, 2006 at 4:33 pm

  Oops… almost forgot… Doug writes:

  “Hey Dimitri I went to your happy commune of a user forum and saw that you enjoy bitch slapping your users there too. The following “

  That’s a highly entertaining thread, especially when not taken out of context. Readers will be amused to see it in its entirety at

  http://forum.manifold.net/Site/Thread.aspx?id=25493&ti=632919884905770000

  The “emelio” you referenced endeared himself to the forum community by using racial epithets and other charming slurs. There’s one in every crowd, but it’s not something most users find acceptable, hence a somewhat sarcastic reply from me.

  We are, by the way, very close to Oracle and extremely flattered they chose us to work with. See the sister thread at

  http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2006/08/23/selling-open-source-gis-to-the-users/#comment-9462

  …which appears to have moved here.

• 22 Cam W. // Aug 25, 2006 at 8:30 pm

  Dimtri:

  Just a couple points…

  In fact, Manifold even provides free, fully-licensed installations of SQL Server, DB2 and Oracle on the Manifold DVD.

  That is over selling things a bit… you guys provide EXPRESS versions of those DBs.

  I find it interesting that some of the key points that Dimitri touches are being address in Arc 9.2. Personal GDB are being replaced with File GDB that arn’t based on Access / Jet any more. SQL Server Express is now included in some versions to run with SDE. Perhaps ESRI is paying attention after all.

  Manifold includes SDO_GEOMETRY. You get a direct, high performance link to the fastest enterprise DBMS storage of GIS geometry and attributes around

  This isn’t correct… every side / side test I’ve ever seen has shown SDE to be faster…. even more so with large data sets. 10g was however I huge leap for Oracle.

• 23 Chris C. // Aug 26, 2006 at 5:55 am

  ‘In fact, Manifold even provides free, fully-licensed installations of SQL Server, DB2 and Oracle on the Manifold DVD.

  That is over selling things a bit… you guys provide EXPRESS versions of those DBs.’

  And your point is? I doubt anyone would be that naive to believe Manifold was providing anything other than the free Express editons.

• 24 Doug // Aug 26, 2006 at 10:16 am

  So Dimitri’s style seems to be:

  Make a false claim about a competitor showing how they are old
  State how manifold is better
  Ignore contradictions
  Overwhelm anyone with a wall of text

  Lets look at a good excerpt of Dimitri’s response:

  “That’s nothing more than shapefiles in MDB database form, and a good example of how ESRI not only perpetuates old-fashioned stuff from its own product line but also misses the point of newer Microsoft technology. It manages to combine the stupor of shapefiles with a database format particularly unsuited for multiuser work.”

  Shapefiles have nothing to do with geodatabases apart from the fact that ESRI allows access to both from the GeoDatabase API. Lets think this through, shapefiles have no relationships, GeoDBs (in MDB form) do. Hmmm, interesting. If you were “astute” you would notice that the shape format is uncompressed while SDE data is compressed. Also if you recall your Summerian ArcGIS, personal geodatabases were introduced at 8.0.1 while shapefile support came later at 8.1 which would be odd if Access MDBs were really just shapefiles under the covers.

  Finally, you are too dense to admit that ESRI abstracted data storage from data access. MDBs (Access) are just one storage format and they aren’t even used by multiple simultaneous users in ArcGIS. They are called personal geodatabases for a reason. So here we see Dimitri making a totally false comparison between different things. “Access is a horrible multiuser platform!” Well no kidding, it is a personal geotabase. Apples to Apples comrade!

  “See, for example, Microsoft’s own knowledge base article at

  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300216/en-us“

  How interesting, Access fragments and needs to be cleaned up? How is that ESRI’s fault for providing people a DB to use out of the box? If you don’t like it, blame Microsoft. ESRI offers other options, but of course it looks bad for you if admit that ESRI supports multi user databases.

  “The more you know about mdb, the more you realize it is not a particularly astute choice. If they wanted a bulletproof, fast and free server in the Microsoft world they should have used the free SQL Server Express engine, not MDB.”

  Well not to remind you about the concept of a timeline again, but where was SQL Server Express when ArcGIS 8.0.1 came out? It didn’t exist. Isn’t ESRI supporting SQL server express?

  “Manifold, in contrast, can work directly with robust, open geometry+ attribute formats storing in serious, big-time, totally reliable DBMS products like SQL Server, IBM DB2 and Oracle. In fact, Manifold even provides free, fully-licensed installations of SQL Server, DB2 and Oracle on the Manifold DVD.”

  Umm Dimitri, you are aware that DB2 licenses ESRI technology for the shape field in DB2, right?

  So a couple of thoughts here. First of all, you make it sound like ESRI can’t work with the “big-time, reliable DBMS” products, as if somehow there was no support for Oracle, DB2, Informix, SQL server, etc. Then you put your fudge in about providing fully licensed installations of Oracle and DB2 on your DvD, which is misleading at best and laughable at worst. Finally you ignore the small fact that SDE is faster than Oracle (as noted by users below).

  I look forward to the wall of text response

• 25 Brett // Aug 26, 2006 at 7:22 pm

  I use Manifold and I like it. It does what I need and I was able to afford it. That is all I really care about.

• 26 James Fee // Aug 26, 2006 at 9:01 pm

  At the risk of spamming on my own blog, Topology Errors blog has a couple ideas on the subject:

  It Takes a Village to Raise A …

  It Takes a Village (Reprise)

• 27 Dan L. // Aug 26, 2006 at 9:08 pm

  Ditto to what Brett said.

  For as little as $100, you can get Manifold’s Internet Map Server. I had it set up and running on one of our servers in under an hour. It’s the best software bargain out there. Our CIO is very happy that I only needed to spend a few hundred dollars to introduce a GIS to our institution.

• 28 RaF // Aug 26, 2006 at 10:33 pm

  Very interesting!

  Just so everyone knows ahead of time, I’m a Manifold user (a little over 2 years now) and an ESRI user (a little over 19 years now). Manifold is an awesome product, and I can accomplish many tasks much faster and easier in Manifold than I can using ESRI products, at a fraction of the price. But, having said that, as Dimitri already pointed out, I still have to rely on ArcGIS for cartographic output.

  Doug, I’m not trying to start a flame war here, but unless I’m mistaken, your stretching things a bit here with your statement that ArcGIS can” use” Oracle, SQL Server, etc. I believe you need SDE to use spatial data in these DBMS packages, which is an additional $10,000+ or so (plus ArcEditor at about $6500+). Where as Manifold Enterprise Edition does this right out of the box - at $395 or so. I would say that indeed, this discussion is comparing apples to oranges. The two simply aren’t in the same league (not meaning one is “better” than the other, but because they both have capabilities the other doesn’t) –each one has it strengths, and its weaknesses. But its hard to deny that Manifold is pushing the GIS envelope, and given the price of Manifold, other GIS vendors should be a little worried.

  Unfortunately, these discussions always turn into a comparison of “ArcGIS does this, can Manifold?”. Rather than looking at the innovative technologies in Manifold that allow you to work in ways that you wouldn’t/couldn’t even try in ArcGIS. I strongly recommend that you check out the link provided earlier to the video on SQL/Spatial SQL at Cornell. You can accomplish tasks with a simple SQL statement using the powerful implementation of SQL in Manifold that would require several intermediate operations in ArcGIS (if you could even do it).

  Here is a very brief rant of things that I like in Manifold. I could be MUCH longer.

  Manifold’s implementation of spatial SQL is simply amazing! You want to get a list of all parcels within 150 feet of a road? Just write a simple spatial SQL statement and you have your answer - no buffering, no jumping between ArcMap and ArcToolBox, no making new geodatabases or shapefiles, just a simple SQL statement and you have your answer. To me - that IS productivity! An average user with basic data base skills should be able to construct their first usable spatial SQL query (first time Manifold user) in less than 30 min.

  Need to change database properties? No problem, you can change field widths, and/or types with a couple of mouse clicks. Tired of not having length/area attributes (without add-ins)? Manifold has this in every spatial DB (and for points the native X,Y of the coordinate system and the Lat-Long). Need to reverse the direction of a line? Simply select the line and use the flip transform. Need to create polygons from closed lines? Simply select “Bounded Areas” from the transform tool bar and it’s done!

  Maybe you have a length or area attribute in your database that isn’t system derived, but if you split the line or divide the area, you need the attribute to be divided in proportional equivalents to the proportions of the new feature. This can be set up through the database design (NO programming or scripting). Or maybe you routinely get point data in Excel spreadsheets, other databases, ASCII text formats (maybe data gathered by non-GISers who write down the lat/long from a handheld GPS)? Manifold will handle it with ease, even if the data is in DMS and not digital degrees (you can change the formatting of the fields to latitude and longitude and Manifold will convert it to DD). Manifold can dynamically link to Excel Spreadsheets, etc., so if you have someone who uses GPS to get point data and they store and edit the info in an external format, simply link the data as a drawing and anytime the external data is updated – so is the GIS data (this is a fantastic feature to use in combination with a Manifold IMS site – Oh, Manifolds integrated IMS is another favorite feature).

  I could go one like this for quite a while (days?), but I think you should get the picture by now.

  As for the lack of a demo version, I’m sure that this has lost sales (kept me from trying it for several years). But, if it keeps the cost of Manifold down, well I can’t argue with that. The Manifold Web site could definitely use a little more polish. I’m sure that they have lost many sales due to old, out of date information on several pages (it just doesn’t look professional). But, that doesn’t change the fact that Manifold is a good, inovative product. If you take the time to really learn it (get the videos from gisadvisor.com), you’ll have a very valuable addition to your GIS tool set, and find yourself using it all the time (even if your primary GIS software is ArcGIS).

  I’m looking forward to some more interesting posts!

  Cheers

• 29 Laurent Jégou // Aug 27, 2006 at 3:50 am

  As an university GIS teacher, Manifold possibilities and price are really interesting, if only i’ve heard about it sooner here in France…

• 30 RaF // Aug 27, 2006 at 12:32 pm

  A quick clarification to my last post. I thought that Doug had said in one of his posts that; “ArcGIS works with the major DBMS products”. I was mistaken; I have quoted his statement below.

  “So a couple of thoughts here. First of all, you make it sound like ESRI can’t work with the “big-time, reliable DBMS” products, as if somehow there was no support for Oracle, DB2, Informix, SQL server, etc. “

  The following portion of my reply should be disregarded;

  “Doug, I’m not trying to start a flame war here, but unless I’m mistaken, your stretching things a bit here with your statement that ArcGIS can ”use””

  The proper response should read as follows;

  Doug, I’m not trying to start a flame war here, but to enable the use of ArcGIS with Oracle, SQL Server, etc. I believe you need SDE, which is an additional $10,000+ or so (plus ArcEditor at about $6500+). Where as Manifold Enterprise Edition does this right out of the box - at $395 or so. I would say that indeed, this discussion is comparing apples to oranges. The two simply aren’t in the same league (not meaning one is “better” than the other, but because they both have capabilities the other doesn’t) –each one has it strengths, and its weaknesses. But its hard to deny that Manifold is pushing the GIS envelope, and given the price of Manifold, other GIS vendors should be a little worried.

  Sorry for the confusion – I should know better than to write anything after 10:00pm.

  I would like to add a little clarification for those out of the ESRI loop. Doug stated;

  “SQL Server Express is now included in some versions to run with SDE. Perhaps ESRI is paying attention after all.”

  This is true; ESRI has a version of SDE designed for small installations with SQL Server Express. But the price of admission is still rather steep. This version of SDE will cost around $5,000, plus you will need a seat of ArcEditor for every workstation that will be doing concurrent editing through SDE at over $6,500? per seat (or you can use AutoDesk Map 3D 2007 at around $3,600 per seat).

  For companies/organizations on limited budgets, at over $11,000 for the SQL Server Express version of SDE and one license of ArcGIS (ArcEditor) to edit the data in SDE, the cost of admission to the world of the ESRI multi-user DBMS GIS simply is not possible.

  With Manifold you can have similar capabilities at around $395 a seat. I can’t comment on the performance of Manifold vs. SDE running on SQL Server Express – as I have no experience in this area. But I can say that for the average GIS user, all of the standard tools needed for a multi-user GIS environment will be available from either ESRI of Manifold.

  Software is simply the tool we, as GIS professionals, use to get our job done. Too often, we lose sight of the fact that the most expensive, and best marketed software may not truly be the best/only tool for the job. I personally find overzealous reactions to the Manifold vs. ESRI very interesting. But factions on both sides often go over the top in defending their software, which I also find interesting. Unfortunately, the information in these debates is often skewed to prove a point, and makes it difficult for rational discussions.

  Well intentioned, but unclearly described or over stated marketing information can often add to the confusion and create “enemies” of a particular product. An good example of this for Manifold is the comparison to Photoshop. Clearly, Manifold can not do everything Photoshop CS can. But, with Spatial SQL, you can do some very unique and powerful image manipulation/analysis in Manifold. A good example of this with ESRI is when you go to one of their training courses you learn all of these great tools in the software, and so you make the plunge and get ArcView 9.x only to find out that half of the tools you wanted are only available in ArcEditor at over 4 time the cost of ArcView (I has seen this happen many times).

  Bottom line – we all need tools that allow us to efficiently do the job we need done. So why do we all have to agree to use the same tools to do GIS? If you can justify and afford to use ESRI products, then you certainly have every right to.

  Too often, I see ESRI users blatantly dissing someone who uses, and likes, Manifold, or other non ESRI GIS software (the opposite happens too, but not nearly as often). I enjoy doing GIS much more since I started using Manifold. I can do many things much easier and faster in Manifold. I can understand why Manifold users tend to bring up Manifold in GIS discussions, it’s fun to use, and has some very innovative (and streamlined) GIS tools. It’s not the “ultimate answer to everything” GIS software (but neither is ArcGIS), and it does have it’s weak points, but when you come across something that’s really great to use, and has a great price too, you tend to want to tell everyone about it.

  Obviously there are those radical evangelists who will never be swayed from the software they have chosen, what ever package that is. But for the rest of us who have, and do use ESRI products, and have open minds, take a look at Manifold. If you buy it, only do so if you intend to really learn it, as simply playing with it for a couple of hours will not do it justice (again – get the training videos from gisadvisor.com). It may not replace your ERSI products, but it will have it’s place and be a very valuable addition to you GIS.

• 31 rick // Aug 27, 2006 at 1:09 pm

  RAF,

  your insights are a breath of fresh air. You have brought up some very good points. I would agree that no product answers every question perfectly. However, I can certainly see an organization with, say, 2 full blown ArcGIS workstations, and maybe 25 Manifold clients. Therefore, you would still get the ESRI software for those 3% things that Manifold can’t do (i.e. maybe a polygon overlay of a ridiculously large dataset, or a gigantic “clip” of 1 million parcel boundaries with a polygon), but Manifold can be used to supply the user needs for 95% of what most GIS analysts need to do.

• 32 Digital Earth Weblog » Blog Archive » Manifold and Big Toys Syndrome // Aug 28, 2006 at 5:33 am

  [...] After stirring the pot a little, James Fee asked, so what did we learn? Here are my sweeping generalisations: [...]

• 33 James Fee // Aug 28, 2006 at 6:24 am

  @RAF
  “Too often, I see ESRI users blatantly dissing someone who uses, and likes, Manifold, or other non ESRI GIS software (the opposite happens too, but not nearly as often).”

  You do realize Manifold was never brought up on this blog until a Manifold user let everyone know open source GIS would never amount to anything because of Manifold. I’d generalize it a different way.

  “Most ESRI ArcGIS users don’t about other choices and aren’t knowledgeable enough to even know about Manifold/QGIS/etc to make disparaging statements. Manifold users make it their mission to let the world know that ESRI sucks compared to Manifold”

  Right or wrong that is how I’ve noticed it on this blog.

• 34 tri // Aug 28, 2006 at 8:49 am

  @James:

  So you are annoyed with Dimitri’s push. That’s OK. This used to annoy me, too. Then I got over myself and bought a copy of you-know-what. Boy, was I feeling sorry I did not do this earlier… At the price / performance ratio of Manifold, I can tolerate ten Dimitri’s!

  The weird thing is, after a while, I started getting a sense of Dimitri’s rants and now I am actually enjoying them. Go figure.

  You really should try using Manifold yourself. I am sure if you asked Dimitri, he would pull the strings and make the company provide you with a free copy, obviating the lousy argument about there being no eval version (which is, let’s face it folks, simply lame). With a battle that hot, he will probably pay for this copy from his own money, if needs be. Don’t lose this chance.

• 35 RaF // Aug 28, 2006 at 9:22 am

  @James

  Let me apologize for my blogging etiquette/ignorance, my enthusiasm for Manifold got the best of me. Not being a blogger, I thought the subject of this particular blog was;
  “Manifold? Never heard of it”.

  But before I go away to my blissful blogless existence, I feel that I should respond to your statement;

  “Most ESRI ArcGIS users don’t about other choices and aren’t knowledgeable enough to even know about Manifold/QGIS/etc to make disparaging statements. Manifold users make it their mission to let the world know that ESRI sucks compared to Manifold”

  I can’t speak for others, but I certainly didn’t want to give you the impression that I was saying ESRI sucks compared to Manifold. Sometimes my unbridled enthusiasm a product that makes GIS really fun diminishes my better judgment. However, having used both, I do feel that I can make some valid comparisons between the two, though I’m still just’ scraping the surface with Manifold. I think your statement that most ESRI users “aren’t knowledgeable enough to even know about Manifold/QGIS/etc to make disparaging statements” rings very true.

  When I said;
  “Too often, I see ESRI users blatantly dissing someone who uses, and likes, Manifold, or other non ESRI GIS software (the opposite happens too, but not nearly as often).”
  I was referring to all other software, be it Manifold, Open Source, Global Mapper, Tatuk, TntMips, etc. This is an opinion I have developed over the past 20 years, as Manifold is not the only non-ESRI GIS software I have used. I’m also not trying to say that ALL ESRI users are like this, in fact, many ArcView users are also victims of ArcInfo/SDE/ArcIMS user elitism. This is simply an artifact of our society/culture – where bigger and/or more expensive is better. This leads to the “mine is more expensive, therefore I’m better” syndrome. But, I would have to say that the vast majority of ESRI users are really great people.

  I have used OS too, but unfortunately I haven’t found an OS package that “fits” yet. Many people (other than Academia) look to OS as a means to either implement, or expand GIS, without spending a lot of money (that is why I keep trying it). I would surmise that this is why Manifold came up in a discussion about OS GIS, as many Manifold users fit into the category of people who needed/wanted to do GIS, but didn’t have the $$$$ for ESRI products. They explored the OS options, but couldn’t find something that fit their needs. In their search for free/affordable software, they came across Manifold. Manifold fit their needs, and they found it to be very feature competitive with ESRI options, but a lot cheaper. Therefore, there is a very strong mental link in their minds between Manifold and OS GIS. Plus, Manifold supports the OGC standards of WKB, WKT for DBMS data storage and WMS and WFS-T for Internet Mapping. I know that I will be looking into the possibilities of using of PostGIS and uDig with Manifold.

  Ok, I’ve given way more than my 2 cents (which with inflation is probably worth about 0.002 cents). Now I’m back off to my blogless bliss!

  Cheers

• 36 James Fee // Aug 28, 2006 at 10:12 am

  RaF, most of my posting it tongue in cheek. The only reason we are talking about Manifold on this blog is because someone brought it up on my comments in another tread. This whole “Manifold, never heard of it” thread was my way of getting people off of the open source thread and post on this one.

  I’m a consultant, so while my company is an ESRI Business Partner (most of our consulting is for DoD which is almost all ESRI) we’ve recommended anything and everything, except Manifold.

  I guess maybe a blog posting on why that is the case might be in order, but it just has never come up. I don’t think that is a good thing or a bad thing, just the reality of my situation. But when Manifold users tell me I am not serious about GIS because I don’t use Manifold, who am I not to laugh at that suggestion.

  I did get an email from a Manifold user asking why there were no Manifold blogs on Planet Geospatial. My answer to that is because there are none that I know of. If someone wants to start one I’d be glad to add it to PGS.

• 37 PHL // Aug 28, 2006 at 12:30 pm

  James, maybe Manifold should pay you to sell their product. Your blog gets as much traffic as their whole site.

  http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?compare_sites=spatiallyadjusted.com&range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=manifold.net

• 38 James Fee // Aug 28, 2006 at 12:34 pm

  @PHL

  Thanks for the props, but Alexa is a very poor method of figuring out how popular sites are. I block their bot in my robots.txt file.

• 39 PHL // Aug 28, 2006 at 12:35 pm

  So wait, you could be way above them in popularity?

• 40 James Fee // Aug 28, 2006 at 12:36 pm

  No it isn’t that simple, I’m not sure how much the robot comes into play. I think most of it is based off of that horrible Alexa toolbar. Honestly I don’t know how they come up with those stats, but I do know Alexa is not a reliable method of comparing one site to another.

• 41 ManifoldUser // Aug 28, 2006 at 12:46 pm

  OK James, what do you have against Manifold? Why do you hate it so much?

• 42 James Fee // Aug 28, 2006 at 12:52 pm

  Where have I ever said I hate Manifold? I sarcastically said I never heard of it, but I never said I hate it. In fact I’ve gotten the exact opposite. I don’t mind the hate mail, but people are so extreme on both sides it really sickens me. This conversation isn’t a friendly spat, but a war.

• 43 glenn // Aug 28, 2006 at 12:53 pm

  this is just an observation but isn’t it a bit odd that Manifold is getting so much coverage here on the blog of an ESRI developer?? Nothing against james or anyone else but realistically, given the love/hate relationship of Manifold with eSRI is it any surprise that any mention of manifold here would spark a lively and scathing discussion. This is kind of getting out of hand and I think I’ll need to remove my email notification from these comments as its getting a bit crazy. As for Alexa, james you have some great points there and realistically, the only people that love Alexa are those that have great rankings (for whatever reason) - like most third party tools you need to take with a grain of salt. the scary thing is that there’s tons of PR agencies and others who swear by Alexa, mostly because they haven’t a clue as to how elese they can guage a site’s popularity

• 44 Richard // Aug 28, 2006 at 4:47 pm

  I’ve used ESRI software for 10 years. I’ve researched with it, taught with it, and produced a lot of maps with it. I enjoy using the software every day.
  However, when I had the opportunity to do some consulting apart from the day job, I bought a copy of Manifold and the spatial extension. The first job paid for the computer and software. I bought the software in spite of the website. When I have gotten stuck and posted a question to the forum, I’ve received an answer in short order.

  Manifold is a professional tool. You need to be familiar with databases, scripting, and geography to use it efficiently. It has met my professional needs, and broadened my GIS knowledge. I guess I don’t get emotionally involved with my software. Manifold is a very good GIS.

  Now I need to get back to my ArcMap project.

• 45 ManifoldUser // Aug 28, 2006 at 4:54 pm

  You are so full of shit James. You’ve manipulated the whole thing since the first post.

• 46 James Fee // Aug 28, 2006 at 4:56 pm

  Are you kidding me? Where have I manipulated anything. Manifold users took on open source GIS on my blog. All I’ve taken issue with is people saying I’m not serious about GIS because I don’t use Manifold.

  Anyway, Manifold isn’t listed on my things I hate post.

• 47 Jason Smith // Aug 28, 2006 at 7:47 pm

  Perhaps the greatest legacy of Manifold will be that, for $295 (which my first copy cost me), a GIS-neophyte scientist was able to add mapping support to environmental assessment projects. If not for Manifold, I would have had to outsource to someone like James Fee.

  Now, we are also just scratching the surface of Manifold’s capabilities, but the cost/performance factor is HUGELY skewed in Manifold’s favor vs. ESRI.

  I’m not just talking about the cost of the software, but also of the platforms and personnel requirements that go along with ESRI products.

• 48 Dylan Beaudette // Aug 29, 2006 at 10:37 am

  Thanks for bringing the researcher-scientist point of view back into the discussion Jason. Although I have not had the honor of trying out manifold yet, it sounds like something worth recommending to others who are stuck on the Windoze platform. For all others in the scientific world using more modern operating systems I will continue to recommend GRASS/QGIS/PostGIS/GDAL. The great thing about these is that you are not tied to your tools, as the skills required to operate these pacakges are highly transferable: i.e. theory-driven not menu-click driven.

  fun discussion by the way-

  cheers,

  Dylan

• 49 Chris C. // Aug 29, 2006 at 11:02 am

  James, I apologize for Manifold User’s comments, he obviously comes from a more radical sect of Manifold Users

  This burst of discussion on Manifold, both good and bad, has at least has made more people aware of it, which was my intent when I made my initial post in the OS discussion.

  I can see now that you’re serious about GIS, although that comment wasn’t directed at you, but to the wider GIS community, though maybe do you have your tongue planted in your cheek when you come up with topics for this blog.

• 50 Mark Outhwaite // Oct 19, 2006 at 9:52 am

  Excellent thread - thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks guys. I am off to buy a copy of Manifold. Anything that generates this much heat must be worth a close look. And I am a ‘neophyte’ so may be away some time while I get my head around it.

• 51 KoS // Dec 12, 2006 at 8:23 pm

  Hey James. Don’t forget to change the title or make some type of note to amend your statement above. Since you will be receiving a copy of the software.

  I don’t want anyone to be offended and demand an answer, justice, retraction, or…..

  

  KoS

• 52 James Fee // Dec 12, 2006 at 8:25 pm

  Didn’t you read the note at the bottom of the page (right below the “post” button”)?

• 53 KoS // Dec 13, 2006 at 7:17 am

  Now I have…..by the time I say this post my eyes were glazed over for the night.

  KoS

• 54 Jason F // Apr 13, 2007 at 10:49 am

  Interesting - Dimitri says that Manifold doesn’t do trade shows. Pretty sure Manifold had a stand on the NY GIS Conference floor…

  http://www.esf.edu/nysgisconf/2006/index.html

• 55 James // Apr 13, 2007 at 9:58 pm

  Actually yes and no.

  Manifold was given a free booth at the conference because they provided some Manifold licenses as door prizes. Originally, Manifold was not going to make use of this - however some Manifold users requested to make use of it as a “Manifold Users” booth (to showcase what they have done w/ Manifold etc.). Manifold agreed and provided the stands and some materials, but it was manned by Manifold users and not Manifold employees or sales reps.

  Cheers.

• 56 scott // Apr 15, 2007 at 6:01 pm

  some Manifold users requested to make use of it

  I wish I could have seen what misfits they used for their booth. Did they know anything about GIS or were they a bunch of Microsoft Excel users that colored in maps of the US State boundaries and called it a GIS - LOL!

• 57 James // Apr 17, 2007 at 4:43 pm

  Misfits? Ouch - now you’ve almost hurt my feelings;-) Just kidding. To re-iterate though, Manifold didn’t “use us” for “their” booth; it was we who requested to use the booth and space to which they agreed. This is a small but fundamental difference - it was initiated by us, not them.

  In answer to your question - yes we know a fair bit about GIS. Of course I’m biased;-) But no, I wouldn’t consider [us] to be misfits. I wont bother naming names as its not my place to do so, but I’ve been working in the GIS field for almost a decade now and came from the ESRI world. No, we didn’t use MS Excel to colour a map of the US.

  Personally, among other things I showed some hydraulic modelling along with how we clean up poor data sets from DWG’s and Excel files (that *others* call databases). I also showed how we have done some rather sophisticated geometric GPS route analysis (both horizontal and vertical) for a major client to identify issues w/ their trucks etc. Others showed some nice IMS stuff and programming. All in all I think it was a good time for both us the those who came to ask questions.

  Cheers.

• 58 Dimitri // Apr 18, 2007 at 7:55 am

  “Did they know anything about GIS or were they a bunch of Microsoft Excel users that colored in maps of the US State boundaries and called it a GIS - LOL!”

  Actually, Scott, I hear that they had planned activities just for you, in case you stopped by the conference.

  They were going to bring a box of crayons and some paper place mats from a local restaurant that showed a US map you could color in. I hear they figured that was about right to keep you occupied while they had conversations about serious GIS matters, such as leveraging Excel web queries with spatial SQL.

  Funny how it is, by the way, that your short comment in just one sentence manages to compress so much damage to your reputation in the eyes of people who know what they are talking about.

  The first is your mention of Excel as if it is somehow a slam to either work with Excel or to be able to use data from Excel. You probably also meant this as some would-be stylish way of implying that Microsoft Office types are somehow inferior to an elite GIS guy like you would have us think you are.

  That’s phase one of maximum stupidity, to suggest that Microsoft Excel people are somehow dumber than “GIS” people are. In point of fact, Microsoft Office people are no dumber and no smarter than GIS people are. They follow the same bell curve. It’s just that there are about a thousand times more Microsoft Office people out there than legacy GIS people.

  So whatever activity you are interested in examining, say, the entry into GIS by Microsoft Office people, the raw numbers are so overwhelmingly larger that whatever sub-cohort catches the eye, say, especially intelligent or especially computer literate people, seems to be immensely larger than in legacy GIS.

  It is, of course, larger in absolute terms even though on a percentage basis Office people are like any user population. That’s why people who actually do business with the very large Microsoft Office population come away with the impression that Microsoft Office types are vastly more computer literate than guys like you. In raw numbers, there are indeed many more computer literate people in that cohort than occur in the relatively small number of legacy GIS guys.

  Picking Excel was an especially useful way of declaring yourself an insular yob, since, what? 96% ? of the world’s computer population uses Excel for much of its data acquisition and analysis? In experienced computer science circles, working with Excel is taken for granted.

  So yes, most people who are at least semi-literate use Excel all the time. You’d have to be an abject dolt not to understand that or to somehow try to slam it.

  For that matter, working with Excel is a routine part of any modern GIS package’s core capabilities. It can be seen in Manifold in the example at…

  http://www.manifold.net/doc/7x/a_flashy_demo_web_queries_and_kml.htm

  …which also has the charming attribute of demonstrating many things the folks at New York know how to do and you don’t.

  In fact, I hear that much of what the user community talked about in their sessions was thoroughly adult talk about spatial SQL. (That’s why they were going to bring crayons for you, so you would not be bored by all that).

  The above example URL touches on spatial SQL just a bit. I don’t expect that you’d understand any of it, as you appear to be unfamiliar with the power of modern tools like Manifold.

  But just in case I misjudged you, here’s a chance for you to show everyone you are at least as smart as the folks at the New York conference. The confines of this blog format don’t really allow the introduction of a massive GIS project as were discussed in NY, but they do allow for a “put up or shut up” example of a few lines that will allow any technical expert to know if the writer is or is not a yob.

  Please respond with a posting that contains a gem of spatial SQL written by you. Show us you know how to do something impressive, something that shows the community here your ability to work simultaneously with vectors, rasters and surfaces to do something elegant of practical interest to, say, a town or small county.

  Since we do want to give you the benefit of the doubt and since you know so little about Manifold it is unlikely you know anything about doing spatial sql combining vectors and rasters in Manifold, it is OK if you use some other big time spatial product, such as Oracle Spatial.

  So there it is Scott… just post a few lines of brilliantly written SQL to show us all you know more than how to accuse other people of using crayons.

• 59 James Fee // Apr 18, 2007 at 9:21 am

  OK this conversation has jumped the shark….

  Thread closed.