Developing GIS Solutions With MapObjects and Visual Basic [Paperback]

Bruce Ralston (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0766854388 | ISBN-13: 978-0766854383 | Publication Date: October 31, 2001 | Edition: 1

This essential resource offers GIS professionals and students the programming skills to create state-of-the-art GIS applications using MapObjects and Visual Basic. Developing GIS Solutions with MapOjects and Visual Basic teaches GIS programming in a complete hands-on environment. This how-to manual provides instruction in how to use the latest version of the popular MapObjects ActiveX control from leading GIS application developer ESRI. Along the way, readers will gain a hands-on introduction to Visual Basic (VB) programming through practice VB programs utilizing MapObjects. GIS topics such as spatial selections, thematic mapping, overlays, map projections, and web-based GIS are all addressed and explored thoroughly using a blend of thought-provoking software design discussions, detailed examples, and carefully crafted exercises.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bruce A. Ralston, is a Professor at the University of Tennessee. He received three awards from the Association of American Geographers, including the Edward L. Ullman Award for Outstanding Contributions to Transportation Geography, 1999; the Outstanding Geographic Software Award, 1994; and the Excellence in Applied Geography Award, 1991. Bruce Ralston is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Transport Geography and the President of GIS Tools, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: OnWord Press; 1 edition (October 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0766854388
• ISBN-13: 978-0766854383
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #74 in Books > Computers & Technology > Microsoft > Development > Visual Basic

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Confusing book with many errors, May 8, 2002

By 

John Adams - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developing GIS Solutions With MapObjects and Visual Basic (Paperback)

I am a GIS student who's also gone through most of a computer science degree and so I know Visual Basic and lots of other kinds of programming, but going through this book is one of the more tedious and confusing things I've done. Granted, MapObjects is a fairly large library and object set, but the author makes it worse in several ways. First, he deliberately gives you code in some places that doesn't work, only to correct it later on. This may be an admirable attempt to get you to learn it and think it through, but it just doesn't work - it's too large a set of objects and methods to keep track of, so trying to keep track of things which aren't even supposed to work makes it worse. Furthermore, in several places he does this, he changes some parts of the code, but forgets to change other parts that the original changes make neccessary to change, and one is left with a confusing mish-mash of partially edited code that doesn't look like the pictures in the book and doesn't always work. It is almost as if the author himself can't keep track of what's going on. Finally, his explanatory method of writing down large chunks of code with *short* descriptions afterwards doesn't really help. It would have been much better if he explained each component one-by-one, possibly even isolating them from other components where possible, and also made the code as simple as possible *without* having the deliberate errors. When you're learning something as complicated as this, the smaller the chunks, the better - and it's really nice to have code that works and runs right from the start so you can really see how it works (instead of not being able to see how it works due to deliberate errors).

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as I expexted., July 8, 2002

By 

odoe (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Developing GIS Solutions With MapObjects and Visual Basic (Paperback)

The one major flaw this book has, which someone else touched on was that the author does not thoroughly explain what is happening in the code. Being a VB developer, I still found myself scratching my head in some areas. Also, it is hard to tell if the errors in the code are intentional or typos. If you copy the code out of this book to the letter, your program will not work properly. For example on page 116 one line of code reads, "If lstlayers.Count > 0 Then". This code SHOULD be "If lstlayers.Listcount > 0 Then".
Mistakes, or learning tools like this are very annoying, but seeing as my choices for a book on MapObjects is between this and another book, which has not faired too well in it's reviews, it will have to do. If you are new to Visual Basic, I suggest you learn the basics before delving into MapObjects...this book requires it, although it does attempt to show you very basic things.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Nearly useless, January 20, 2004

By 

Scott Graber "sfgraber" (ny- United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Developing GIS Solutions With MapObjects and Visual Basic (Paperback)

Poorly written, very confusing and error plagued. The author's intentions are great but he misses his goals entirely. Unfortunately, the book is a waste of money.