Manifold now shipping GIS product for SQL Server 2008 Spatial (Katmai)

I thought readers of this forum would be interested to know commercial products are now supporting Katmai.

Manifold Release 8 started shipping last Tuesday, 28 August 2007, to the general public with direct, native support for SQL Server 2008 (Katmai) Spatial built in.

Links...

Home page (SQL Server 2008 featured prominently):

http://www.manifold.net/

News page overview of Release 8:

http://www.manifold.net/info/news.shtml

Spatial DBMS user manual topic:

http://demo.manifold.net/doc/spatial_dbms.htm

The spatial DBMS user manual topic is long because it introduces the general ideas behind spatial DBMS for users new to this part of GIS. SQL Server 2008 users will probably want to skip right down to the "Supported Spatial DBMS" section of that topic, as well as the "Projections and Spatial DBMS" section, which discusses use of EPSG codes within Katmai data stores.

From the user manual page:

"Manifold supports SQL Server 2008 spatial today for those Microsoft employees, partners, beta testers and independent developers who have been given access to SQL Server 2008 spatial, and will continue to support SQL Server 2008 spatial when it is released to the public."

Note that Manifold Enterprise Edition ($395) is required to work with native Katmai connections and native Katmai geometry types. This is true of SQL Server 2008 as it is of the other spatial DBMS's supported by Manifold (Oracle, IBM DB2 with Spatial Extender, PostgreSQL/PostGIS). If you have the Katmai spatial CTP you don't need to get anything than the standard Release 8 production edition of Manifold. It will automatically recognize SQL Server 2008 spatial data stores upon connection using the new, dedicated SQL Server data source. For example, once you connect (you can connect to many different types of spatial DBMS at once) you can copy data from Oracle Spatial or legacy storage like ArcSDE and paste it into Katmai. The Database Console in Manifold also works with Katmai, which provides a useful way of crafting and executing queries.

By the way, we'd like to compliment the Katmai team on a job well done. We've had a lot of experience with spatial DBMS and GIS and this is clearly a world-class entry from Microsoft.

Ah, almost forgot: if you work for Microsoft, Manifold is free for you. Drop me an email and I'll arrange a free license for you.

Regards to all,

Clearing open "question".