APPLICATIONS

ObjectFX Corporation, a leader in delivering dynamic location-enabled enterprise information solutions, today announced availability of version 4.1 of SpatialFX, the company's innovative and patented Java/J2EE spatial enterprise software platform. The new release is being demonstrated this week at JavaOne, Sun Microsystems' Worldwide Java Developer Conference. Version 4.1 includes enhanced spatial "rule and event" processing, a new 3D visualization option, and compatibility with North American street level data from NAVTEQ. SpatialFX 4.1 strengthens the company's ability to address the growing and evolving market for location-based applications and technology, a market which IDC has labeled "Spatial Information Management." The new product release includes capabilities that enable customers to integrate spatial capabilities more tightly into their internal business processes, as well as to provide more accurate portrayal of geospatial context through 3D visualization. "Most organizations today lack a flexible, scalable platform for integrating location-based services into their applications," said Barry Glick, President and CEO of ObjectFX. "With SpatialFX 4.1 we have made it easier to tie location information into their high-value applications and strategic decision making." SpatialFX 4.1 is designed to enable organizations to utilize location-based analysis and visualization as components of their critical mainstream activities. In corporate enterprises, these include applications such as supply chain management, customer relationship management and business intelligence, as well as custom "line-of-business" applications. In government organizations, SpatialFX is deployed critical applications requiring a strong geospatial component include mission planning, situational awareness and intelligence data fusion. Unlike traditional Geographic Information Systems (GIS) products, the SpatialFX Java development framework was designed from the ground up for easy integration by developers who may not be GIS specialists. "Location is a fundamental, real-world organizing principle," said David Sonnen, consultant to IDC on spatial information management. "As information systems evolve to reflect the real world, location simply has to be accurately represented and integrated into mainstream business processes. This more expanded role for location technology has little to do with traditional GIS workflows. ObjectFX recognizes this fundamental principal and this is reflected in their new product offering." The enhanced Rules and Events capability in SpatialFX 4.1 supports creation of real time, spatially-aware rules for monitoring and processing of spatial conditions, allowing users to integrate real time location-based conditions into their operations and decision making. Spatial rules can monitor a wide variety of conditions between spatial entities such as inside/outside, enter/exit, distance, and density, and combine those spatial conditions with other business or mission data. The Rules and Events feature of SpatialFX 4.1, combined with the ability to process real time data from sensor networks, creates a wide range of possibilities in civilian, military and intelligence gathering activities. For example, an organization could create a spatial "geofence" or "geocorridor," and a rule to issue an alert if a vehicle (air, surface or maritime) deviates from planned routes, or if any vehicle enters a designated area. Spatial rules can automatically initiate any number of actions such as sending an e-mail to an individual, highlighting an object on a map, or communicating a software event to another application. The new 3D visualization capability in SpatialFX 4.1 allows the display of 3D views, with navigation features such as "drive-throughs" and "fly-throughs" providing realistic depiction of terrain, buildings and other vertical features. The new 3D option allows customers to view shapefiles and to generate a 3D scene from a 2D scene by draping vector and raster data over terrain models managed by the SpatialFX Terrain Service. These 3D views can provide a richer and more informative context, showing elevation and terrain characteristics that are not apparent in 2D views. The 3D module also provides display capabilities for the ObjectFX symbology library, including an extensive set of MIL-STD 2525B military symbology. With SpatialFX 4.1, ObjectFX has expanded the range of choices available to its customers by adding support for street level data from NAVTEQ covering the lower 48 US states and the District of Columbia. ObjectFX customers who have licensed data from NAVTEQ can now use it with the SpatialFX Routing, Geocoding and Visualization services. ObjectFX continues to support the use of street level data from Tele Atlas (formerly GDT) for these functions, in addition to offering its own street-level data sets derived from TIGER/Line 2000 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. SpatialFX 4.1 is available for immediate shipment to new and existing customers.