Editor's Notes

Today's Directions Mag will feature another article I wrote on the changes in the GIS industry driven by the Open API tool kits being offered by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others. I tried to stay away from the negatives regarding the traditional GIS companies and where they are headed, but I will add this:

If ESRI, MapInfo, AutoDesk and others don't start offering usable free data along with their Web mapping products, they will continue to lose market share to the GYM types. Even the open source world has to shudder a little bit because the free data that GYM are offering overcomes a huge barrier to GIS use that traditionally kept good Web GIS applications in the realms of the better funded organizations.

I had always imagined that ESRI would use their Geography Network to serve out useful free data, but I think they missed a huge opportunity by not doing so. We'll see if they get a clue and can catch up. Government protectionism can sustain some companies, but it typically doesn't last.

Seems like Intergraph's GeoMedia has improved greatly in the last few years, but I wish they would put a time limited version out there so that people like me could actually test drive it. I'm not sure why the major vendors are making it harder to test drive their software.  Given the grassroots growth in the GIS industry driven by the open API and open source GIS software, you would think that the Intergraphs and ESRIs would give out more software to try to hold onto their marketshare.

Software and system requirements should be testable.

The four types of tests that can be used to validate a requirement are analysis, demonstration, inspection, and testing. Any one requirement may be validated according to any of these four methods.

Analysis -