Computer Foundation's clients - comprising a large portion of the GIS users in South Africa - have welcomed the company's development of the world's first Autodesk interface to Oracle 8i Spatial.

The Ariel Technologies subsidiary recently announced that it had successfully developed the interface, called GemServer, which complies with Open GIS (OGIS) Consortium standards for SQL at database level. "We have received an excellent response from our users and are in the process of installing GemServer at several of our customer sites," confirms Wilhelm Herbst, Managing Director of Computer Foundation.

GemServer offers Autodesk users the ability to integrate their geographic data into their enterprise applications in Oracle, bringing them firmly in line with the latest evolutions in the spatial applications technology arena. "This development underscores the movement of GIS firmly into the mainstream information technology (IT) market," he adds.

Herbst says that information on the Internet and inside corporate Intranets is not limited to simple text fields and numbers. The addition of a spatial component into business information systems fills the gap between what is contained in information and where that information actually resides, in a geographical sense. "This is vital in today's business environment, especially when seen in the context of the Internet and the global village," he points out.

Robin Parrish, Oracle SA Spatial Solutions Manager comments: "Computer Foundation's undertaking to deliver an Oracle-based integrated spatial solution for their GIS product offering supports the vision of delivering solutions based on open spatial standards conformance.

"These standards will further ensure the use of spatial data in all enterprise wide solutions. Spatial enablement of all enterprise data will give an organisation a competitive advantage into the new millennium."

Computer Foundation

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