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TAXUS SI Ltd.Map viewer “Mapnik”, developed by TAXUS SI Ltd., allowed Polish users from nature protection and forestry sector easy presentation and analyses of database information in a spatial context.
Business Problem Polish State Owned Forests manage 80 % of Polish forests which is about ¼ of Poland’s area. In order to better manage and protect this great resource State Forests introduced a database system (Informix 5 on UNIX) in early 1990. Over 400 tables of the database captures wide range of data about forest inventory, wood harvesting, real estate and accounts in each of 439 forestry divisions in Poland. Unfortunately communication with user is based on text interface which doesn’t allow user to made a full use of this huge database. During development of the first fully functional GIS for Zlotow forestry division by TAXUS SI Ltd. MapObjects based map viewer called MAPNIK was created (1998). Apart from built in digital versions of paper maps and reports used in State Forests it allows easy access to data and its presentation on maps with a help of tools developed specially for foresters. Ability to analyse and show the data from database in a spatial context with thematic maps and a range of spatial operations enables really full use of possibilities offered by both database and digital maps. Project “GIS for Zlotow” has started common use of digital maps in Polish State Forests. Technology Implemented Application was developed with ESRI MapObjects and Microsoft Visual Basic. Special attention was given to specific functionality depending on user needs, ease of use for users not familiar with GIS and flexibility of the software. Thanks to internal metabase of the application it can be easily adjusted to different databases and map layers. It also allows translation of names of database objects into “user – friendly” names and helps user unfamiliar with SQL in automatic creation of sophisticated queries by supplying information about database relations. Development Team Biography TAXUS Ltd. has been present in Polish market since 1998. Most of its programmers has also forestry education and experience. We have developed many projects for Polish forestry and nature protection sector varying from GIS for single National Parks or forestry divisions up to Forest Digital Map Standard for State Forests, which we regard as our most significant achievement. Currently we are involved in continuation of the Forest Digital Map Standard project for higher levels of management and analytical works for State Forests database. Our main software product MAPNIK is constantly developed accordingly to increasing demands of our customers.
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