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#What is mapinfo how to#
If you open up a shapefile, database table etc it'll create a TAB file that tells it how to open the file in the future. While 'TAB' file is generally used to refer to the data structure MapInfo uses, the TAB file itself is really just a plain-text reference to the data container.The easiest way to see what MapInfo's doing under the hood is to have the MapBasic window open while you work. If there's a set of operations you do regularly it's not too difficult to wrap them up in a script for future use. I wouldn't go too deep on it if you can help it. The programming language associated with MapInfo is MapBasic.MapInfo's current implementation of SQL doesn't include a WHERE clause on UPDATE statements - the workaround here is to isolate the rows you want to work with with a SELECT statement first.I could probably go on a multi-comment rant about MapInfo, but I'll try to keep this to a few bullet points: PostGIS) you'll need to give MapInfo it's own schema to handle it's styles in. This also has a bunch of knock-on effects like MapInfo's fairly clunky settings for thematic maps and the fact that if you do integrate with a spatial database (e.g. This can be nice if you want this one point to have a different style to all the others but I personally find it's a massive pain to have to manually maintain the layer styles (though you can update them automatically through scripts). If you're coming from Arc/Q, the main difference you'll find on a day-to-day data creation basis is that rather than setting styles on a layer-by-layer basis, the symbol information is stored as part of the 'Graphical Object' that MapInfo calls geometry + style. The main plus points are the very tight integration of SQL into everything, the main downsides probably stem from it being so insular from what is now mainstream GIS. So I use MapInfo at work most days and while it doesn't deserve a lot of the flack it gets, I wouldn't say it's a better GIS than others on the market.