How It Works

Overview

There are 4 main concepts that work together to allow users to create beautiful, feature rich and informative maps.

1. Connections – Where the data comes from
2. Datasets – How the data is configured and indexed
3. Layers – How the data is styled
4. Maps – How we combine several layers of data and interact with them

Connections

Connections are the source locations where the data originates from. These sources may be individual files or servers containing multiple tables of data.

Mapworks is able to pull data from a variety of sources. These include:

• File upload or link – which accepts any spatial file including SHP, GDB, GPKG or GeoJSON files
• Database connections to Postgres or SQL Server databases
• Other GIS web services – including WMS, WMTS and Bing Maps

See Creating Connections for more information.

Datasets

Once a connection has been made, datasets are created from that connection. A dataset is an individual table of data. Configuration regarding how the data is accessible to the user is applied here.

Vector datasets can also have their fields configured depending on whether to make them searchable (available for free text search) or queryable (able to be used as part of the query builder or thematics).

Vector data must be “published” into Mapworks before it can be viewed. Vector datasets also have advanced settings that allow additional functionality, including:

• Reverting to previous published versions
• Publication schedule and publication hook (that runs a database function that checks if the data needs to be updated)
• Enable full feature history tracking
• Update the source file / connection in place
• Create a filtered dataset (i.e. a dataset with a subset of data enforced on the server side).

Note that data can be updated in place without any impact to the end user. Updating the source data file also allows the designer user the opportunity to reconcile any changes to the data schema, whether fields have been added, removed or renamed.

Lastly, a special dataset type can be created called an “Editable Dataset”. This is a vector dataset that requires no backing connection and exists only within Mapworks. The schema for this dataset can be configured by a Designer user and data can be edited using the map’s CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) tools.

See Creating Datasets for more information.

Layers

One or more layers can be created from each dataset. These contain the styling and visualisation settings for each layer. Layers cannot be edited individually but can be modified within a map and saved back to the layer object. This means that all maps that include this layer (and haven’t made their own styling changes) will receive the updates to that layer.

See Creating a Layer for more information.

Maps

Maps are collections of layers that the end users can then interact with. They can be created from an existing map or from a blank canvas.

Mapworks has several “Featured” basemaps that can be used as a starting point to provide context for specific maps. This includes international maps generated from Open Street Map (OSM) data authoritative data from Australian State authorities. Maps supplied by Amristar include regular data updates as part of the Mapworks subscription.

Mapworks’ maps have a plethora of out of the box functionality as part of Mapworks Studio. Studio is used to design, configure, stylise, query and interact with the map and its data. Users can either be given full access to this functionality, or a simplified map can be embedded into a website so as not to overwhelm users.

See Creating a Map for more information.