How it works

Set up your Spatial Server »

Use the web-based administration pages to:

• Load the spatial (vector) data that you want to make available for use within the InstantAtlas reports. Alternatively, if you have Oracle Spatial or ESRI ArcSDE you can make spatial datasets from these stores available to InstantAtlas reports via the spatial server.
• Make any database table containing X, Y coordinate information available as a point dataset.
• Make image (raster) files available as a web mapping service (WMS) for use as background mapping in InstantAtlas reports.

Build your application »

Use one of the InstantAtlas Data Managers (Excel or Access) to generate data.xml files.

Generate data.xml files dynamically from an existing database using HTML forms and web scripts. You can read more on generating data.xml files that match the InstantAtlas schema in InstantAtlas data streaming v2.0.pdf

Configure your InstantAtlas reports »

Use InstantAtlas Designer and Stylesheet editor to design your reports e.g. change colours, move or resize report elements, add text, add images, etc. In addition, use Designer to make specific spatial server configuration changes.

Deploy your InstantAtlas reports »

Once you have an application that can generate data.xml files you can embed the InstantAtlas reports in your web site.

• Open and InstantAtlas report with the data parameter pointing to a web page that generates the required data.xml e.g. http://mydomain.com/atlas.html?data=/getdata.jsp?
• Once the report has read the data.xml file it knows which geographical features to request from the spatial server.
• The spatial server returns the requested spatial data in either Flash or SVG along with any contextual spatial layers and WMS images as defined in the configuration file for that report.