Why Develop with Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise Technology

The next generation of web mapping technology is now available from Autodesk, ready to provide a powerful distribution tool for your maps and spatial data. Why develop with the new technology? The answer may surprise you.

The new web mapping platform goes far beyond Autodesk MapGuide® 6.5 software, providing a completely new architecture, new programming language support, new data access methods, new viewing options, and a new authoring environment.

The new platform is available as open source software (MapGuide Open Source) and will soon be available as a commercial version (Autodesk MapGuide® Enterprise). For simplicity, the new product is referred to in this paper as "MapGuide." All concepts discussed here apply to both the open source and commercial versions of the new product. Autodesk MapGuide® Studio will be available separately. This paper provides an overview of some of the features of the new MapGuide technology and its components. It describes the main components in a general way before moving into a more detailed description of each component and its benefits. The new MapGuide technology can be installed, customized, and developed on multiple platforms, including the Linux® operating system.

This paper discusses the opportunities to take advantage of multiplatform support and to connect to enterprise-wide systems. MapGuide Components The new MapGuide technology comprises four key components: MapGuide Server, MapGuide Studio, MapGuide Web Server Extensions, and the MapGuide Viewer, which provides two viewing options.