Pitney Bowes MapInfo Professional - Manual (Page 185)

For more information, see Improving Live Access Performance in the Help System.
Opening a DBMS Table in MapInfo Professional
After completing the instructions in the following sections:
• Creating a Data Source Connection
• Creating a Map Catalog in the DBMS to Work with Data
• Making a DBMS Table Mappable to Display it on a Map
you are ready to connect to your data sources and the database tables you want to work with. If you are
not familiar with the details of your remote database type, discuss your requirements with your database
administrator to find out the basic information necessary to connect to your database.
Options for Opening Tables
When opening DBMS tables, there are a number of options for:
• Which tables in the database to open or select to open all of the available tables.
• Whether to open the tables live or linked. If selecting linked, you can open them with caching. You
can set this option individually for a table to override what is set for all the tables you will open.
• How you want the data to display on the map by selecting point, line, and region style options. You
can change: symbol type, color, and size, as well as the label font; line color and pattern; region fill
color and pattern, and border color and pattern.
• Column and row filters on tables. Filters let you reduce the amount of information that you will work
with and reduce the time it takes to fetch and save the data.
• A directory where the MapInfo TAB file (with the same name as the table) will be saved.
You can apply these selections to all of the tables you will open and also select overrides for individual
tables.
Performing Queries on Tables
When performing a query on a table the query executes when:
• Linked tables: Opening the table for the first time, and when refreshing the table.
• Live with cache: Adding the table to the map, and zooming or panning in the map.
• Live without cache: Adding the table to the map, zooming or panning in the map, and clicking in the
map with the Select or Info tools.
You can specify which records to retrieve from the database by attribute or by geography. The query
syntax is specific to the database that you are accessing. MapInfo Professional translates some
expressions when passing a query to the database, such as Object, Within, Selection, and
Current_Mapper. You may save your queries, so that you can reuse them.
Tables and Metadata
MapInfo Professional stores information about a table in the .tab file's metadata, which is not displayed
on the map. MapInfo Professional uses metadata to manage transactions between MapInfo Professional
and the server database. Two of the most important kinds of information stored in the metadata include
the connection string and the query you build from the DBMS Table Wizard, or Expert dialog box.
Opening a DBMS Table
This section describes how to open a DBMS table.
The connection to your DBMS must be open before you can open a table. If you have not yet opened a
connection or if you have restarted MapInfo Professional (and must re-open a connection), see
Reconnecting to your Data Source after Startup .
185 MapInfo Professional User Guide
Chapter 7: Working with Data in a DBMS