[Gvsig_english] FEEDBACK gvSIG 1.9 (BN 1253) -- use of gvSIG in production environment

[Simon Cropper (Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd)]

Hi,

I was asked by a list member to provide feedback regarding the use of 
gvSIG in a production environment. He communicated to me directly so the 
list was not privy to the conversation. I respect his wishes not to have 
the conversation on record but I would prefer to throw my observations 
down so everyone can contribute/criticize/comment and the developers can 
identify future priorities. Without going into the full conversation the 
following points were *made by me* regarding gvSIG. I have highlighted 
some salient points.

   1. I have been using gvSIG as my primary GIS package since about
      October 2009, or at least when the stable release of gvSIG 1.9 (BN
      1253) was released.
   2. As you will of noted I made comment on the list early in this
      period that gvSIG+Sextante was the first OS GIS that allowed me to
      complete my normal workflow without either resorting to the use of
      ArcView or other OS packages.
   3. Since then I have completed 2 'typical' projects and 1 'quite
      large' and challenging project (the largest and most complicated
      in  my biennial calendar) and gvSIG has provided a robust
      relatively stable GIS system.
   4. You would have noted that the armada of posts on the server. These
      are feedback as I push the limits of the package. Feedback I hope
      will be valuable to developers and will result in an overall
      improvement to the package.
   5. In comparison to the pseudo standard - ArcView 3 - gvSIG is
      comparable or excels in its functionality. The only area that
      still a few glitches is the map routine; does maps quite well but
      some combinations throw it into a spin. These problems are
      transient however and no data to date have been lost.
   6. The only problem I have encountered that has caused data
      corruption (and I really tried hard to get this to happen after I
      noted a couple of glitches) was editing an instance of a file
      represented multiple times within the same view. *In theory, gvSIG
      should prevent this from happening (i.e. editing this file without
      first closing the other instances being used by gvSIG).* That
      said, on review of all the other GIS packages and ArcView 3, I
      note that they also do nothing to achieve an exclusive file lock
      when editing a file.
   7. I tested gvSIG 1.1.2 a while ago and decided it was not suitable
      for my needs. When the Beta for 1.9 became available I found it
      had the functionality but crashed doing simple things (=good to
      play with, bad to use in production). Once the stable version of
      gvSIG was released I found it did ~70% of what I needed but when
      combined with Sextante did 95% of what I needed and a whole bunch
      more that I only wish I had the capability of doing (spacial
      analysis, image classification, etc).
   8. After several months using gvSIG v1.9 (BN 1253) *I have drawn the
      conclusion that the program is suitable for a production
      environment*. *That said, the routines assumes that the user do
      things in a particular way and if they don't it can kick up an
      error.* As a programmer myself the cause of this is obvious --
      *the developers have not constrained the use of the routine to a
      particular action or developed a graceful error capturing
      routine.* For example, if you edit a file which is currently
      displayed in a view elsewhere (i.e. not the instance you are
      editing) the program will generate an Java heap error (not very
      descriptive). Apparently this is a known NO NO as gvSIG does not
      exclusively lock the file (nor does any other GIS package for that
      matter). *To me this is purely a programming error* *- you either
      prevent the editing happening or automatically search for other
      instances and turn them off while the edit is in progress.* *In
      most of the situations that I have had problems the programmers
      have not ensured the environment is correct or captured errors
      gracefully and the result has been odd behaviour or an error
      message.* After detailed investigation I find that I was asking
      gvSIG to do something it could not do but it had not captured it
      early enough or gracefully reminded me that that is not allowed.
      Another 'problem' that comes to mind is the use of special
      characters in the file names -- I think this has more to do with
      Java rather than gvSIG -- use the minus sign in a name and all
      hell breaks loose.
   9. *So I suppose the warning is that if you have a reasonably adept
      worker that is familiar with computers and GIS, gvSIG is
      fantastic.* *For a rank amateur, there is a potential to have
      regular problems being encountered as they blunder along.* In the
      absence of good detailed tutorials in English, these problems
      can't be avoided. *So if you plan to use gvSIG is commercial
      environments where users are unskilled I suggest detailed tutorial
      be developed and some training programs considered.* *If you feed
      gvSIG what it wants it works like a dream.*
  10. ... please don't get me wrong I really like gvSIG and still
      continue to use it. In fact I am writing some tutorials myself to
      help fill in the void. ...
  11. The other thing to consider is that, at least in my opinion even
      considering my 'negative' comments above, gvSIG is BEST OF BREED.
      All these problems are also apparent in all the other OS Desktop
      GIS products I have reviewed; and I have trialled quite a few.

-- 

Cheers Simon

Simon Cropper
Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd
PO Box 160, Sunshine, Victoria 3020.
P: 9311 5822. M: 041 830 3437.
mailto: scropper at botanicusaustralia.com.au 
<mailto:scropper at botanicusaustralia.com.au>
web: www.botanicusaustralia.com.au <http://www.botanicusaustralia.com.au>