Recently we were contacted by Alfred Sawatzky, a product manager for iFactor Consulting, who had a Smallworld-using customer interested in seeing how iFactor’s Web Maps Connector would perform when serving imagery via LizardTech’s Express Server® Software. Web Maps Connector provides access to the data and services provided by Microsoft Bing™ Maps in GE’s Smallworld applications.

With a copy of Express Server, Alfred created a simple workflow within the corporate firewall where he demonstrated how to use Express Server to serve a potential customer’s internal MrSID® imagery overtop Bing data from the cloud within Web Maps Connector. In this demonstration, the customer has MrSID imagery of Pennsylvania that is more recent than the imagery from Bing and they wanted to expose their current imagery over the old to ensure they’re dealing with the most up to date data.

As Alfred mentions in his blog, “sworldwatch”, although GE’s Smallworld SOMs (spatial objects managers) provide a plug-in for viewing MrSID files, “The nice thing about using Express Server is that it does all the georeferencing/tile-stitching for you so you no longer need to configure a MrSID SOM with things like multiple path names, coordinate system, etc. You can use the GE WMS SOM to simply connect to the Express Server layers and you get all the imagery stitched together.” You can “leave the MrSID file access to Express Server and enjoy a seamless cross-tile experience in Smallworld using the Web Maps Connector module.”

This is a new and exciting prospect for both iFactor Consulting and LizardTech, who can now offer another great software solution to Smallworld customers working with MrSID imagery.

Last year we helped solutions provider Smartronix address some image delivery pains that their customer, the Air Force Special Operations Command, was experiencing. The AFSOC need to process huge amounts of satellite and aerial imagery quickly, store it efficiently, and access it instantly in common geospatial applications and viewers. In particular, they wanted to store terabytes of raw imagery in an Oracle database and view it via both MapViewer and ArcIMS.

Smartronix asked if we could make that happen. We said “Yes we can.”

We’re pretty excited about this “win” because it’s a high profile example of an Express Suite workflow.  Express Suite comprises all three of LizardTech’s major geospatial software products, GeoExpress for image manipulation and compression to industry standard formats, Spatial Express for storing compressed images in an Oracle database, and Express Server for serving out those images via the fastest and most stable delivery technology available.

We worked hard to make all three products interoperate seamlessly with each other and with common GIS software, so it’s great to see the trio succeed on the road.  

Read the entire Smartronix-AFSOC case study on the Express Suite “Customers” page on our website.

The State of New Jersey’s 2007 orthoimagery is now available for download from the New Jersey Geographic Information Network’s newly-designed NJ Information Warehouse, which uses LizardTech’s Express Server to serve all compressed orthoimagery layers.

The imagery is available in both MrSID format (compressed 8-bit, 3-band, RGB natural color, 5000′ by 5000′ tiles) and JPEG 2000 format (compressed 8-bit, 4-band RGB plus infrared, 5000′ by 5000′ tiles). The site looks great and is easy to use, and we’re pretty proud of the way Express Server performs on it.

You can add the WMS layer of New Jersey’s 2007 orthoimagery into any application supporting WMS by entering the following URL:

http://njwebmap.state.nj.us/njorthos