MapViewer is a rendering service for geospatial data managed in Oracle Spatial. It is a component of the Oracle Application Server, and first shipped with the 9.0.2 version of 9iAS. MapViewer is a pure Java component written for the Oracle Container for J2EE (OC4J), although it can also be deployed to other J2EE containers such as JBoss.

Starting with Oracle Application Server 10.1.2, MapViewer is part of the Oracle AS Java Edition, Standard Edition, and the Enterprise Edition. It is also included as part of your JDeveloper license for development purposes.

Minor updates (e.g. version 5.00 to 5.01) may be downloaded for free if your serial number is registered. Connect your computer to the Internet, then click the Help | Check for Update command in MapViewer. This will download the latest patch and install it on your machine. Information about the latest version is listed on the Version History page.

Downloading the Quick Start kit of MapViewer 10.1.2 is the easiest way to get started. This kit includes a standalone OC4J (Oracle Container for J2EE) pre-configured with the latest version of MapViewer and ready for action. The kit is available from from MapViewer's OTN page at http://otn.oracle.com/products/mapviewer, under the Software section. This kit plus a Java SDK 1.4 or later installation is all you need to get going.

Oracle database version 8i (8.1.6) or later, as well as Oracle Application Server 9i (9.0.2) or later. It's also possible to simply install a standalone version of Oracle Container for J2EE (OC4J) and deploy MapViewer to it.

Officially, MapViewer is shipped as part of the Oracle Application Server Java, Standard and Enterprise editiions. For development purposes, you may download the MapViewer kit from Oracle Technet (www.oracle.com/technology). It is listed under the Oracle Spatial section (www.oracle.com/technology/products/spatial/content.html). The Map Definition Tool is an unsupported tool that can be used to visually create database-backed definitions of map styles, themes and basemaps.

Throughout this FAQ, you will come across references to the MapViewer home page. This is the default page that you will see when you point your browser to the URL of the form http://host:port/mapviewer, where the host should be the name or IP address of the host running MapViewer, and port is the port number at which the Oracle Application Server is listening for web requests. It may also be the port on which OC4J is listening, if you only installed a standalone version of OC4J.

Beginning with MapViewer production version 9.0.4, certain administrative operations such as adding or removing a datasource will require you to log in as an administrator. The admin user name and password depends on whether you deployed MapViewer in a standalone OC4J or a full Oracle Application Server install.

The limiting factors of MapViewer performance include: cpu speed/JVM speed, JDBC speed (fetching large amounts of data from db), amount of heap memory and spatial cache allocated to MapViewer. Always make sure you have allocated enough memory when starting the oc4j Java process. For instance, the JVM option -Xmx512M will ensure that MapViewer can obtain as much as 512 MB of heap memory when needed.

Q26. I have sent a [.GSB] file to a colleague. When they try to use the [.GSB] file, they get an error message stating that the file "does not appear to be in the correct format."

MapViewer works with Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP or higher. Windows NT Version 4 with Service Pack 6 or higher is not specifically disallowed, but is no longer supported. MapViewer 6 will not allow installation on Windows 95.

Since MapViewer can use any TrueType font on your system for symbols, a TrueType font editor will let you create your own symbol sets. There are numerous font editors available. Two that we have heard of people using are: