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Note that the above are for the older, 3.x version of ArcView. Information on the newer ArcView 8 can be found in book and online course formats.

I hope that helps some. What I would ask in return is that when your company gets going with GIS you help promote the use of GIS in Schools (book) by helping any local schools that are interested in getting started with this. School/Business partnerships benefit everybody, especially when it provides the schools with alternatives and additions to the standard Microsoft/Intel curriculum.

Note that the above are for the older, 3.x version of ArcView. Information on the newer ArcView 8 can be found in book and online course formats.

I hope that helps some. What I would ask in return is that when your company gets going with GIS you help promote the use of GIS in Schools (book) by helping any local schools that are interested in getting started with this. School/Business partnerships benefit everybody, especially when it provides the schools with alternatives and additions to the standard Microsoft/Intel curriculum.

Note that the above are for the older, 3.x version of ArcView. Information on the newer ArcView 8 can be found in book and online course formats.

I hope that helps some. What I would ask in return is that when your company gets going with GIS you help promote the use of GIS in Schools (book) by helping any local schools that are interested in getting started with this. School/Business partnerships benefit everybody, especially when it provides the schools with alternatives and additions to the standard Microsoft/Intel curriculum.

Note that the above are for the older, 3.x version of ArcView. Information on the newer ArcView 8 can be found in book and online course formats.

I hope that helps some. What I would ask in return is that when your company gets going with GIS you help promote the use of GIS in Schools (book) by helping any local schools that are interested in getting started with this. School/Business partnerships benefit everybody, especially when it provides the schools with alternatives and additions to the standard Microsoft/Intel curriculum.

Note that the above are for the older, 3.x version of ArcView. Information on the newer ArcView 8 can be found in book and online course formats.

I hope that helps some. What I would ask in return is that when your company gets going with GIS you help promote the use of GIS in Schools (book) by helping any local schools that are interested in getting started with this. School/Business partnerships benefit everybody, especially when it provides the schools with alternatives and additions to the standard Microsoft/Intel curriculum.

Note that the above are for the older, 3.x version of ArcView. Information on the newer ArcView 8 can be found in book and online course formats.

I hope that helps some. What I would ask in return is that when your company gets going with GIS you help promote the use of GIS in Schools (book) by helping any local schools that are interested in getting started with this. School/Business partnerships benefit everybody, especially when it provides the schools with alternatives and additions to the standard Microsoft/Intel curriculum.

Note that the above are for the older, 3.x version of ArcView. Information on the newer ArcView 8 can be found in book and online course formats.

I hope that helps some. What I would ask in return is that when your company gets going with GIS you help promote the use of GIS in Schools (book) by helping any local schools that are interested in getting started with this. School/Business partnerships benefit everybody, especially when it provides the schools with alternatives and additions to the standard Microsoft/Intel curriculum.

GIS is a vast field even if you dont throw in web access to data. narrow down your interest or hire someone to do the GIS side and you do the web access side.

web server..
MapServer - works and is mature and stable
ESRI's GIS data server is super expensive but the new version runs on Linux
PDFMap - combine this with mapserver so that your users can download maps they make
SVG - ive seen some cools things happening with SVG
MRSID - for image compression, costs for the compressor but i have built some cool stuff with thier free server.

desktop...
ESRI has a free viewer which reads a XML file. its works ok. there is a Linux version but i havnt used it yet. all of the free (not open source) GIS viewers suck in one way or another cause the companys have some "real" version they really want you to buy (ala ESRI).
Free GIS .. if its open source and GIS its at freegis.org but frankly there isnt allot built out yet thats simple yet modular and will grow with GIS users as they begin to get specialized (image interp, business siteing, habitat annalysis, etc).

theres GRASS and some others but nothing close to the commercial products (unfortuantely). furthermore all of the commercial products are over priced. you have to spend 3,000$ US (single licence) to get anything at ESRI that works. If your going to manage a GIS data collection you should get ArcView but try to find a free solution for end users on the desktop. look at combining MapServer and some of the Content Management systems that are out there for developing GIS access online.

GIS is a vast field even if you dont throw in web access to data. narrow down your interest or hire someone to do the GIS side and you do the web access side.

web server..
MapServer - works and is mature and stable
ESRI's GIS data server is super expensive but the new version runs on Linux
PDFMap - combine this with mapserver so that your users can download maps they make
SVG - ive seen some cools things happening with SVG
MRSID - for image compression, costs for the compressor but i have built some cool stuff with thier free server.

desktop...
ESRI has a free viewer which reads a XML file. its works ok. there is a Linux version but i havnt used it yet. all of the free (not open source) GIS viewers suck in one way or another cause the companys have some "real" version they really want you to buy (ala ESRI).
Free GIS .. if its open source and GIS its at freegis.org but frankly there isnt allot built out yet thats simple yet modular and will grow with GIS users as they begin to get specialized (image interp, business siteing, habitat annalysis, etc).

theres GRASS and some others but nothing close to the commercial products (unfortuantely). furthermore all of the commercial products are over priced. you have to spend 3,000$ US (single licence) to get anything at ESRI that works. If your going to manage a GIS data collection you should get ArcView but try to find a free solution for end users on the desktop. look at combining MapServer and some of the Content Management systems that are out there for developing GIS access online.

I too have been getting up to speed on GIS this year. I'm doing a Postgrad Dip in it at the moment. From all accounts ESRI is the defacto standard amongst most governmental bodies - councils, states, defense etc. Here in NZ ESRI is very strong - about 11 from 14 regional councils use ESRI. And yes it is windows only, the internal scripting which used to be Avenue, now uses Visual Basic. You also have objects that you can chuck in other VB applications to provide instant access to maps. This is not so bad when you consider that as a proportion of the total cost of the GIS, the hardware and software represent a small percentage of the total outlay - most of the expense comes back to data collection and management.

For a good theoretical background on GIS, Burrough et al (1998) Principles of Geographical Information Systems is proving quite good. For practical experience try ESRI's campus where a number of free and/or cheap (compared to training courses) practical courses in GIS are provided.
Hope this helps!
Cheers Gav

Also, most GIS work is done using ESRI's GIS and Mapping software.

I've spent the last year developing a high volume web-based map server using Open Source tools. Note that the emphasis of this project has been vector based data (streets, rivers, shorelines, etc.), not image or raster data, so this skews my views somewhat. Sorry for the length of this post, but this really only scratches the surface of this topic.

The two best free tools I found for manipulating map data and producing maps are GRASS (www.geog.uni-hannover.de/grass/) and OpenMap (openmap.bbn.com). GRASS certainly wins hands-down for its ability to read various file formats (including ESRI Shape Files and E00 Files), but its interface is somewhat ... odd ... and I've found it very buggy when dealing with vector products. OpenMap is a very nice Java application and library that can do some very slick graphics and handle many different projections. However, because it is written in Java, it's ability to scale to the level that I needed (random access street level maps being produced in several seconds) is practically non-existant. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a "higher level" of mapping tool, OpenMap is probably the tool you are looking for.

I've also looked (somewhat superficially) at the major commercial mapping programs, produced by ESRI (www.ersi.com) and MapInfo (www.mapinfo.com). At prices starting at around $25000 and rapidly going up, you'll certainly need a lot of money to get into this game.

On the data side, there's a lot of data available on the net, some of it very good, and some not so good. Finding it is tricky, but it can be done. The "Digital Chart of the World" (DCW) is available from (HREF) and provides vector outlines for all the countries in the world (circa the early '90s). Its North American utility is somewhat limited, as the lat/lon points used in the vector outlines are based on NAD27, rather than the more popular NAD83 datum. The TIGER Line Files (HREF) is an excellent source of street level data (and state and county outlines, and much more) for the United States and various territories. Once the format of this data is understood, it's fairly easy to convert the data to a more usable format. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be much in the way of the tools out there on the net for working with this data.

There's very little free street level data available outside the United States. This is an area crying out for an Open database, as the non-free data sources are really expensive and generally involve nasty royalities.

I have been working on a the Onamap.com project for the last year. The primary purpose of Onamap is to provide a "where is it" tool for the Internet in which anyone can enter location data, commentary, etc.. The components of this project are:
- a common text-based file format for vector data;
- tools for converting TIGER, ESRI Shape Files, and DCW to this common format;
- the location web server, written using Apache, mod_python, and MySQL; and
- a high volume map server, written using Apache, jserv, Java, and C++.

The map server is fairly new technology, and the components written in Java (mainly the rendering engine utilizing Java2D) need to be rewritten in something more efficient. If you want to see samples of the maps that this engine can produce, go to http://www.onamap.com/sample.

The plan is to release this software to the public (down to the source level) in the next few months, after the code is cleaned up, debugged and documented. If anyone is interested in this project, please feel free to mail me at dpjanes@sympatico.ca.

What do you mean by "owns the deafult standard?"

The ESRI shapefile technical description is available here.

That should tell you everything you need...

Also, you'll need to lay your hands on properly prepared and reliable street data for this to work. There again, you'll probably have to pay for it. Several commercial outfits provide such data, and you can also get it from the U.S. Census Bureau.