About the Spectrum Spatial Map Uploader

The Spectrum Spatial Map Uploader is a tool that copies the properties of the layers in a MapInfo Pro map to a Spectrum Spatial server. It takes the information of one map stored in MapInfo Pro and stores the equivalent information in a set of named resources on the server. This tool can be downloaded from the Spectrum Spatial section of the Welcome Page, under Map Uploader on the Utilities tab.

The map created on the Spectrum Spatial server will consist of a number of distinct parts known as named resources.

  • One named map whose name and location will be specified by the user.
  • A named layer for each layer in the map plus a label layer. These will be created in their own subfolder with a name is determined by the name of the map. Each resource will have the same name as used in MapInfo Pro.
  • A named label source for each layer that can possibly be labeled will be created in the same location as the layers.
  • A named table which will point to the data source used for each layer. This will be created in the same location as the map and will use the MapInfo Pro table "alias" name as its name. The named table frequently has the same name as the TAB file that was used to open the table in MapInfo Pro.

The named resources that are created are used by Spectrum Spatial to draw the map and query the data. Any application using Spectrum Spatial, including Spectrum Spatial Analyst and Spectrum Spatial for Business Intelligence, will depend on these resources being created correctly.

Named resources contain different types of information.

  • The named map contains the default geographic location, zoom level, and the ordered list of named layers of the map as they were viewed in MapInfo Pro.
  • A named layer contains all the style and rendering properties of that layer. These can vary from nothing (when all the properties are stored with the data), to ranged zoom constraints, or to one or more thematic definitions with many bins and styles or multiple styles overrides.
  • A named label layer contains the list of named label sources. The order of these determines the order of label processing while rendering the map. This order is identical to the order in MapInfo Pro.
  • A named label source contains all the label properties used for the set of labels from one table.
  • A named table points to the data from the perspective of the server. If the data is in a file (Native TAB, shapefile, GeoPackage), the named table must point to that data on the server. If the data is in a database there must be a valid connection to that database.

Spectrum Spatial uses a named connection to help with this process. These connections must be created before you run the Map Uploader so that the tool can use them to ensure that the data in the map can be found.

Note: The tool does not copy data to the server. Any file based data must exist on the server and be placed under a connection that is created in Spatial Manager before the Map Uploader is used. The Workspace Packager tool that ships with MapInfo Pro can be used for this purpose.