Snowflake Software is pleased to announce the publication of a case study detailing the migration to a central corporate Spatial database and the successful implementation of national coverage OS MasterMap at the Forestry Commission in Edinburgh.

Dave Stewart, head of the GIS development team at Forestry Commission said:

"It has been a steep learning curve for us all, but looking back and considering we had no experience of managing such a large dataset, with input from Snowflake we avoided making any major mistakes and as a result, have delivered a successful project. Originally we envisaged that loading OS MasterMap would be the most time consuming aspect of the project, but in fact putting the infrastructure in place took longer than loading the data. We are delighted with the results and keen to deliver on our vision of making more map data available to more people. "

Originally the project was driven by changing business requirements and the Forestry Commission set out to create a spatial data repository available to all parts of the organisation, including the many dispersed units who were holding data locally. Previously Forestry used raster maps, so the GIS unit was new to managing a dataset the size of OS MasterMap. However the GIS team surpassed expectations for the first stage of implementation and is now working on making a range of intranet browser based map services available to around 1,000 staff.

The Forestry Commission tested four loading tools compatible with its ArcGIS / Oracle Spatial architecture, and GO Loader from Snowflake Software was the stand-out success. Not only was GO Loader reliable and quickest by a factor of four, but the solution offered the most in terms of flexibility and ease of use. At the first attempt the initial load was completed in 8 days and 17 hours (with a further 36 hours for indexation). More importantly, the Forestry Commission GIS team now sit comfortably with the knowledge that they can work with their users to make improvements to the data model to meet future requirements.

Ian Painter, Managing Director of Snowflake Software said:

"The Forestry Commission should be congratulated on this success.  This implementation demonstrates that by using GO Loader the task of building an Oracle Spatial database and implementing national coverage OS MasterMap can be made straightforward."

A full version of the Forestry Commission case study can be downloaded from the Snowflake Software website:

http://www.snowflakesoftware.co.uk/casestudies/ForestryCaseStudy.pdf

About GO Loader

GO Loader is Snowflake Software's premier product for designing and building Oracle Spatial and Locator databases from content delivered in the Geography Markup Language (GML). GO Loader provides easy to use graphical interfaces that guide the user through all aspects of the database lifecycle covering: logical and physical data modelling, table creation, partitioning, data load, indexing and archiving.

GO Loader is the ideal choice for OS MasterMap users and is widely used by local and central government and corporate organizations. It includes specific support for duplicate removal, change only update and feature archiving. GO Loader is a generic tool that works with any GML2.1 schema. Uniquely GO Loader does not require any software change or reliance on bespoke lookup files for any new GML datasets.

To find out more visit:

http://www.snowflakesoftware.co.uk/products/goloader/index.htm