TatukGIS Training Kit prices have been reduced until September 1st.

Single-user Training Kit licenses have been reduced over 25% and multi-user site licenses have been reduced over 45%.

Training Kit prices are listed here.

TatukGIS Consulting has been working with TatukGIS development tools since 2003 and has deep knowledge of both the DK and the Editor.  TatukGIS Consulting has a close relationship with TatukGIS. Purchasing a TatukGIS Training Kit allows users, developers, and organizations to substantially reduce the TatukGIS learning curve and quickly begin using and creating powerful TatukGIS DK and Editor applications by tapping into the wealth of TatukGIS knowledge held by TatukGIS Consulting.

TatukGIS Training Kits have been sold around the world to satisfied customers in the United States, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Thailand.

The following unsolicited comment summarizes the sentiment of these happy customers: “This is exactly what we needed!  Thank you!” – anonymous e911 company professional.

∞ TatukGIS Consulting

A state-wide landcover and tree study was undertaken by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources to identify and classify all vegetation zones across the state. The primary method was through remote sensing backed up by field surveys. The result was the creation of a vegetation database the government uses to stipulate vegetation management guidelines by which all landholders must abide. The premise of this effort was to assist landholders, scientists, industry, and government with world’s best practice landscape management.

Laws were drafted governing management practices in each of the classified zones, with significant penalties for breaches of these guidelines.

While GIS experts had ready access to the spatial data, individual landholders without GIS expertise were being provided with a PDF map of their property. The PDF map provided insufficient accuracy to enable landholders to make decisions about use of their land without risk of accidental violations exposing the landowner to the possibility of prosecution.

AGDATA Australia has used the TatukGIS Developer Kernel (DK-VCL edition) over several years to develop a custom mapping utility to enable landholders to load the spatial vegetation data, overlay it on their property, and view the classification of each vegetation zone. This allows landholders to clearly identify the vegetation zones in relation to their property with sufficient accuracy to safeguard against infractions and risk of prosecution.

The DK support for the ESRI ArcView Shape format and coordinate systems (including PRJ file) was vital for this project. The DK visual layer property control contains functionality to associate the rendering of map features based on attribute field values, which makes applying different colours to the vegetation zones trivial. These and other DK features contributed significantly to shortening the project development cycle.

To further aid landholders identify the classified zones when in the field, a GPS interface was developed to enable uploading of data from the map to handheld GPS units.

The key purpose of the AGDATA development using the TatukGIS DK component has been to provide a simple-to-use GIS tool to landholders who have no formal knowledge or training of GIS. Besides compliance with land use guidelines, this effort is enabling landholders, for the first time, to engage with government authorities over landscape management decisions.

AGDATA (www.agdata.com.au), based in Toowoomba, Australia, is Australia’s largest agricultural software company.

Vegetation layer displayed in the application with predefined vegetation classifications and palette.

∞ TatukGIS Consulting

In August 2012, the Polish company LOGON SA won a public procurement contract with the Poland Environmental Protection Agency to supply computer hardware and GIS software to its provincial offices and to the provincial headquarters of the Poland Fire Service.

LOGON selected the desktop TatukGIS Editor product to fulfill the GIS software portion of the contract.

In addition, the Erie County, Pennsylvania tax assessment department is using the TatukGIS Editor to perform a county-wide reassessment of property values.

The TatukGIS Editor is a powerful and fully customizable desktop GIS that can view and edit enterprise GIS databases and render GIS data in full 3D.

Hefty volume discounts of the Editor place the per seat price at around US$250.  A site-license for Training Kits for the TatukGIS Editor can be purchased for US$359.

In these times of reduced government spending and increased government accountability, government agencies are searching for the best value for their money.

TatukGIS represents the best value in the GIS industry.

∞ TatukGIS Consulting

Several years ago I visited TatukGIS Headquarters in Gdynia, Poland and asked them the following question:

What does the word Tatuk mean?

Here’s what I was told.

The word Tatuk has roughly two meanings: family and indomitable spirit.

Years ago the founder of TatukGIS visited Tatuk Lake in Vanderhoof, British Columbia, Canada and thought it was one of the most beautiful places on earth.

At about the same time his child started talking and was speaking the usual first words of children, one of which is usually “daddy”.  The Polish word for “daddy” is “tatus’”.

(As a side note, I notice that a lot of TatukGIS customers mispronounce the word “Tatuk”.  Listen to the pronunciation of the word “tatus’” in the following Google Translate page and you will never mispronounce it again: http://translate.google.com/#auto/pl/daddy .)

So the connection of family to the word Tatuk is obvious.  But the connection of the word Tatuk to “indomitable spirit” is less obvious.

I was told that in the 1950′s a series of books about Native Americans fighting cowboys and the US Government became very popular in Poland (if I find out the exact author I will update this article).

These books were popular because they embodied the fighting spirit and the resistance of the Polish people to any army invading their country.

My world history knowledge is not the best.  So let’s just limit the discussion to the last 100 years.

During World War II Poland was sandwiched between Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, perhaps the most difficult location to be in on the planet during that time.

When the Nazis invaded Poland in WWII the Polish said “Do your worst!” and the Nazis did.  Sixteen days after the Nazis invaded, the Soviets invaded from the east and did their worst as well.

After WWII ended, the Allies betrayed Poland and gave control of Poland to the Soviets so that the Allies wouldn’t have to deal with the Soviets.  All of this after 5.5 million Polish people perished in the war!  Poland’s difficult Communist period then lasted for the next 45 years until Lech Wałęsa was democratically voted into office.

The plight of the Polish people during WWII mirrored that of the Native American people who were slaughtered by invaders from distant lands and then corralled off to reservations for who knows what purpose.

So, after WWII Polish people became enamored with a series of books about fierce Native Americans fighting for their lives and their lands.

When the founder of TatukGIS visited Tatuk Lake in Vanderhoof, British Columbia, Canada he saw the beauty and felt the quiet power of Canadian First Nation lands and chose the name of that lake for his company.

Tatuk is a Canadian First Nation word.  After much research I was unable to find the actual meaning of the word Tatuk.  But its meaning to TatukGIS is ‘indomitable spirit’.  Indomitable means “impossible to subdue or defeat”.

Now you know.

∞ TatukGIS Consulting

I was recently asked the following question in response to an article about the upcoming TatukGIS software support for Mac OS X and iOS (see TatukGIS to Support Windows 8 & Mac OS X with Single Code Base & iOS):

Can you compare TatukGIS software on the Mac to the MacGIS Cartographica software?

Here is my response:

“Greetings,

Thanks for your question.

My experience is primarily with ESRI products, TatukGIS software, and Quantum GIS.  So, I can’t do a *fair* comparison of TatukGIS software vs. Cartographica, because I have no hands-on experience with Cartographica.

Also, TatukGIS has not *yet* released the aforementioned products for the Mac, so we don’t yet know what the final product will look like.

But, if we assume that the Mac versions of the TatukGIS software will be exactly the same as the Windows versions, then I can say the following based upon the screen-shots and videos I’ve seen on the Cartographica website:

1. If we are comparing the TatukGIS Editor product to Cartographica, I can say that TatukGIS wins on price-point (US$390 vs. US$490), customizability (you can customize the Editor interface, create custom forms and tools, in addition to having access to all of the code in the TatukGIS Developer Kernel), 3D mapping (this is just plain easy to use and !GORGEOUS-SEXY!), and enterprise GIS database support (ESRI ArcSDE, Oracle spatial, etc.).

It’s my guess that TatukGIS also wins on speed and visual display (how pretty you can make your maps look and what range of styles you can use), but I can’t prove that.

I think that Cartographica has superior map layout functionality.  This has always been a weak point with TatukGIS software.  Note that you can create a nice layout with TatukGIS software, but to do so you need to modify a text file rather than use a WYSIWYG interface within the software.

I think TatukGIS has always assumed that a simple printed map is good enough for most users and that if they want to make a really nice printed map they will output an image of the TatukGIS view to another piece of software like Adobe Illustrator or be willing to ‘hack’ a text layout file.

2. If we are comparing the TatukGIS Developer Kernel (DK) to Cartographica it’s like comparing apples to oranges.

However it raises an excellent point which is that the ability of the TatukGIS DK to create native Mac OS & iOS GIS applications is going to change the GIS environment on the Mac and the iPhone/iPad.

The same holds true for the Android environment.  An Italian TatukGIS partner has created a TatukGIS Android development environment (and one for Silverlight as well):

http://www.tatukgisconsulting.com/2012/11/itacasoft-creates-android-silverlight.html

The upcoming TatukGIS Internet Server, revamped for HTML 5, will provide even more development power and flexibility on the server.

3. The free TatukGIS Viewer will also soon be available for the Mac.  The TatukGIS Viewer is one of the most popular free GIS viewing applications in the world.  The Viewer is a slimmed-down version of TatukGIS Editor, without feature editing, enterprise GIS database management, 3D mapping, rectification, and scripting/customization features.

IN SUMMARY, I think the combination of the TatukGIS Editor and the free TatukGIS Viewer will put Cartographica out of business (and not on price-point).

I think many new GIS applications will be created in the Mac environment using the TatukGIS DK.  One of these new products could put Cartographica out of business as well.

I’ve mentioned this before, and I am biased (but keep in mind I have also been working with all levels of ESRI software and code since 1995):

The TatukGIS DK is the best-kept secret in the GIS industry.

The TatukGIS DK is the fastest, most stable, easiest to learn, and most feature-packed GIS development suite with the lowest overhead on the market for the money.  Sure ESRI products have more features, but ESRI products are not the fastest, most stable, or easiest to learn and the overhead and costs are not low.  And in a practical sense, most businesses don’t need the advanced features that ESRI offers.

Imagine if you could develop an application for the following environments with minimal to no code changes: Windows, Windows mobile devices, Mac, iOS, Android, Silverlight, HTML5.  And I’m probably forgetting a few in there somewhere.

Do you have a picture in your mind yet?

Enjoy,

Brian Brown
TatukGIS Consulting”

 ∞ TatukGIS Consulting

(1) With the next release of its Developer Kernel GIS development framework (DK11), the TatukGIS DK will support single code base GIS development on Windows 8 and Mac OS X.

In addition the TatukGIS DK will support GIS development on iOS (the operating system that runs your iPhone).

(2) Also, at that time, the TatukGIS Editor (a customizable desktop GIS) will be available on Mac OS X (as well as Windows).  Thus, customizations developed in the TatukGIS Editor will be available on Mac OS X and Windows using the same scripting code.

TatukGIS DK single code base GIS development on Windows 8 and Mac OS X and GIS development on iOS will be made possible via Embarcadero FireMonkey technology.  FireMonkey is available in Embarcadero RAD Studio XE3, Delphi XE3, and C++ Builder XE3.

A FireMonkey testimonial.

According to Embarcadero, FireMonkey is the fastest path to Windows 8 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion: “With FireMonkey FM² you can now quickly give your applications the Windows 8 UI style and user experience yet still deploy to older Windows versions and Retina ready Mac OS X with native UI fidelity. Your applications will run great on Windows 8 PCs and x86 based tablets including Microsoft’s Surface Pro and you can take advantage of Windows 8 capabilities such as gestures, live tile support, full screen behavior, sensor components and deploying natively to Mac OS X with a native user experience.”

The TatukGIS Editor

∞ TatukGIS Consulting

The TatukGIS Dynamic Duo

TatukGIS essentially offers three different products: (1) the Developer Kernel (DK) (which comes in several different flavors depending upon your application development environment preference), (2) the free Viewer, and (3) the Editor.

The TatukGIS DK is the fastest, most stable, easiest to learn, and most feature-packed GIS development suite with the lowest overhead on the market for the money.  Sure ESRI products have more features, but ESRI products are not the fastest, most stable, or easiest to learn and the overhead and costs are not low.

The TatukGIS Viewer is one of the most popular free GIS viewing applications in the world.  The Viewer is a slimmed-down version of TatukGIS Editor, without feature editing, enterprise GIS database management, 3D mapping, rectification, and scripting/customization features.

What I hear from many clients (and many prospective clients) is that they want to create an application that can do some of the things that the TatukGIS Editor can do while at the same time being able to do everything that the free TatukGIS Viewer can do.

Most of these clients have users/customers who are already using the free TatukGIS Viewer and are familiar with its capabilities and are well-versed in its use.

Yet at the same time they don’t want to pay the price of the TatukGIS Editor (currently US$390) for all of their users because they are not using all of its advanced features.

(Now don’t get me wrong here, the TatukGIS Editor is a great product also.  The feature editing, enterprise GIS database management, and rectification capabilities are fabulous.  The 3D mapping features are simple to implement and gorgeous to view.  And the scripting/customization features include all of the power of the TatukGIS DK.  But why pay for what you don’t need?)

Our solution for these clients is the GIS Dynamic Duo:

A combination of (1) a TatukGIS DK customized application and (2) the TatukGIS Viewer.

The cost of this combination can be as low as the cost of a single TatukGIS DK license, which is currently US$2490 (and the annual maintenance cost is much less than that figure the second year and DK applications can be distributed royalty-free).  (Also, recall that the TatukGIS Viewer is free.)  And the full capabilities of the TatukGIS DK are available for application development in the free Visual Studio Express if you really want to keep costs low.

Most GIS datasets and project files created by the a TatukGIS DK customization can be used in the free TatukGIS Viewer.  And you can even launch the TatukGIS Viewer from a TatukGIS DK application.

(However, note that enterprise GIS database layers can not be used in the free TatukGIS Viewer.  A typical workaround to this limitation is to have the TatukGIS DK customization output a snapshot image or shapefile of a subset of an enterprise GIS database layer that can then be used in the TatukGIS Viewer).

Typically these clients are interested in only one or two of the advanced features that are in the TatukGIS Editor, such as feature editing, enterprise GIS database management, and 3D mapping.

This is where TatukGIS Consulting comes in handy.

We can quickly create a custom TatukGIS DK application for you (please see our Consulting policies here).

Here’s a screenshot of the popular free fGIS application that we created which illustrates a lot of the functionality that is available in the DK.

The free fGIS application was created by TatukGIS Consulting using the TatukGIS DK.

OR

You can purchase a TatukGIS Training Kit (please visit our TatukGIS Training page here) and you can create a custom TatukGIS DK application for yourself almost as fast as we could.

Here are some screen shots from sample applications that you can create from TatukGIS DK Training Kits:

Feature editing sample application from the TatukGIS DK Training Kit.

Geoprocessing sample application from the TatukGIS DK Training Kit.

Enterprise GIS database sample application from the TatukGIS DK Training Kit.

Geocoding and Routing sample application from the TatukGIS DK Training Kit.

3D Mapping sample application from the TatukGIS DK Training Kit.

For more information please feel free to contact us here.

∞ TatukGIS Consulting

TatukGIS Consulting is proud to announce the availability of Academic Licenses for all TatukGIS Training Kits.

TatukGIS Training Kit Academic Licenses can be purchased for 50% off the current price of a Training Kit.

To purchase a Training Kit Academic License, please email tatukgis.consulting@nym.hush.com and provide evidence for your academic status.

Once your academic status has been validated a custom email invoice will be sent to you that can be paid via a PayPal interface (a PayPal account is not required to complete the purchase).

Please make sure to specify ‘single-user license’ or ‘multi-user site license’ in your email message.

For current TatukGIS Training Kit prices, please see the TatukGIS Training Ordering Information page.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

∞ TatukGIS Consulting

The Erie County, Pennsylvania tax assessment department recently used the TatukGIS Editor to perform a county-wide reassessment of property values.

The TatukGIS Editor was used to query appraisal data in vector parcel map layers and visualize the results, to view comparable homes within neighborhoods, and to export the query results to spreadsheets for further manipulation. For example, one of the map layers contained recent sales data which helps determine the fair market value of comparable homes in a neighborhood. Assessors used the Editor with aerial photograph change analysis to help determine and verify in the field which parcels were likely changed or had new construction or demolition since the previous flyover and to analyze building footprints and dimensions on parcels subject to reassessment. The Editor also helped assessors plan routes for field work.

Change Analysis viewed in the TatukGIS Editor.

Building footprint measurements.

In addition, the Erie County planning department used the free TatukGIS Viewer in a county-wide municipal GIS project. This project initially involved distribution of flood zone data to local municipalities to enable each municipality to see newly affected buildings in order to plan accordingly and notify its citizens. Each municipality was provided individually exported shape files of their community, aerial photography, and the TatukGIS Viewer. The shape files and aerial photography were organized into multi-layer map projects for easy use in the Viewer. The TatukGIS Viewer was chosen for this project  because it starts up fast, renders maps and executes queries quickly, and is straight-forward to learn and use with ESRI SHP files running locally on a computer. Simplicity is important because some municipalities have limited computer equipment or technical expertise. Of course, another big advantage of the TatukGIS Viewer is it is free!

Though some larger municipalities were already using GIS, for some smaller municipalities this was their first introduction to GIS. Most municipalities continue to use the TatukGIS Viewer in some capacity, such as by zoning officers to help visualize what is on the ground to aid in their zoning analysis. Some use the software to visualize CAD drawings of water or sewer lines, etc., potentially  together with their GIS map layers. Furthermore, it is beneficial to the County to have more eyes on the GIS data. Because the municipalities are more familiar with their community, they are better able to spot and report errors, improving the accuracy of county data.

Erie County has successfully used the TatukGIS Editor and Viewer products to extend GIS technology to additional users and smaller municipalities – where software complexity, license costs, and user training requirements would otherwise be significant barriers.

Flood Zone data distributed to local municipalities as a map project in the TatukGIS Viewer.

TatukGIS Consulting offers premium support for TatukGIS software.

Premium support includes native American English-speaking support, within-the-hour response times, phone support, and 72 hour turnaround for small application programming tasks.

Here’s how it works:

(1) You email TatukGIS Consulting with your issue and your timeframe.

(2) TatukGIS Consulting will reply to you and let you know if we can help you with your issue within the timeframe you specified.

(Typically we will know right away if we can solve your issue quickly or not.  If we don’t know, we will tell you immediately.  If you want us to research an issue, we can do that too.  But we prefer to do what we do best so that we can provide the best customer service.)

(3) You purchase a retainer of 16 hours of consulting time (consulting rates are displayed and can be purchased here).

(4) TatukGIS Consulting will then complete the task and refund the remainder of the retainer to you.

TatukGIS Consulting has been a TatukGIS partner since 2003.  We have created training materials for most of the TatukGIS software line.  We have also been working with ESRI software since 1995.

We know TatukGIS software and we know GIS.  We can help you streamline your TatukGIS development.

∞ TatukGIS Consulting