Spatial Data Connection in Mapguide

this is my findings during my research of publishing marine physical oceanography of web using Mapguide.

here's the thing. it is so hard to load a geodatabase (.mdb) perfectly into mapguide. mapguide only able to support shapefile (via load data procedure) in default. however, the aims of our research is to create a centralized database, not a file-based data compilation on a web server.

here's the research that i've done in a way to achieve the objective of publishing centralized database on the web using open source mapguide.

mdb file actually can be loaded into mapguide using a little customization of the software. all you need is OGR provider that can be downloaded in OSGEO website..

extract the file and paste the .dll file into opensource FDO directory that usually found in:

c:/program files/osgeo/bin/fdo

but, this provider is still need to be revised since it only load spatial data (with geometry properties). in a normal centralized database, not all data are spatially georeferenced. supported non-spatial data such as land parcel owner is still needed to create a meaningful database!

ok, here's the summary of my finding.

Data format	Provider used	Findings
*.mdb	OGR Provider	Only load spatial data. Non-spatial data that implemented in the database is not included during data loading.
*.mdb	ODBC Provider with system DSN setting	Load all data in the geodatabase, but it neglect the geometry (spatial) properties of the data
*.shp	default	Load the Shapefile data, but doesn’t has ability to load external non spatial data (*.dbf file)
postgis	Postgis Provider	Data need to be converted into postgis format using FME. The spatial extend need to be specified to view the geometry of the data. No issues of spatial – non spatial table.
*.kml	KML FDO Provider	Installed the .dll file, but it is still not appear in the menu of data connection. Duh!!