Pitney Bowes MapXtreme User Manual
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Appendix L: Glossary
Terms
MapXtreme v7.1
627
Developer Guide
Projection
A mathematical model that transforms the locations of features on the earth's surface to locations on
a two-dimensional surface, such as a paper map. Since a map is an attempt to represent a spherical
object (the earth) on a flat surface, all projections have some degree of distortion. A map projection
can preserve area, distance, shape or direction but only a globe can preserve all of these attributes.
Some projections (for example, Mercator) produce maps well suited for navigation. Other
projections (for example, equal-area projections, such as Lambert) produce maps well suited for
visual analysis.
Region
A region is a MultiPolygon with one exterior Ring and zero or more interior Rings (holes).
Serialization
Serialization is the process of converting an object into a stream of data in order to preserve it on the
server. This process is an essential part of maintaining objects in MapXtreme web applications. If the
objects are not maintained the server would need to recreate the object (such as a map) for each
web request.
Spatial Schema
A service that can be applied to a table to enhance its spatial capabilities. There are two types of
spatial schemas in MapXtreme: PointRef and XY. Non-mappable tables that contain either a column
that can be referenced to a column in a mappable table, or columns that represent XY values, can
use these schemas to create a Geometry column. These tables can then be added to a Map as a
layer. See the PointRef Schema and XY Schema glossary definitions for information about each
type of schema.
State Management
A general term in web application development that deals with saving and restoring information from
a browser session.
Table
A collection of data organized in row and column format. In MapXtreme, tables contains the data you
wish to display on the map. Tables hold information that describe the features, including their
geometry, style, and attributes. MapXtreme supports tables from a wide variety of sources including,
native tables (MapInfo .TAB), relational database management systems (RDBMS), dBase, MS
Access, ASCII files, and ESRI ShapeFiles. Speciality tables include raster, grid, seamless, views,
WMS, and ADO.NET. The type of table is available through the TableInfo class. Tables are opened
and closed via the Catalog in the Data namespace. See
Tile Handler
An HTTP handler that processes requests for map tiles from web applications. See
.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
The underlying implementation of a hypertext link or image map that contains the address of a Web
page or file somewhere on the World Wide Web. A URL contains information about the network
protocol to use (usually HTTP) and the path to the page or file. An URL example is
“http://www.mycompany.com/index.html,” which points to the index page for the “my company” web
site.