display labels with superscripts and subscripts

My colleague Albert Godfrind just sent me a nice tip on how to display map labels containing subscripts and superscripts. Thought I will share it with you all.

I found the following to work for me. I create a table (using a NVARCHAR2 column for storing the label), then I populate it with two rows: one using the standard label, one using the sub/superscript notation.

create table labels (
id number,
label nvarchar2(30),
geom sdo_geometry
);

insert into labels (id, label, geom)
values (
1,
'm3 CH4 / min',
sdo_geometry (2001, null, sdo_point_type (1,1,null), null, null)
);
insert into labels (id, label, geom)
values (
2,
unistr('m\00B3 CH\2084 / min'),
sdo_geometry (2001, null, sdo_point_type (1,2,null), null, null)
);
commit;

insert into user_sdo_geom_metadata values (
'LABELS',
'GEOM',
sdo_dim_array (
sdo_dim_element ('x', 0, 100, 0.05),
sdo_dim_element ('y', 0, 100, 0.05)
),
null
);
commit;
create index labels_sx on labels (geom) indextype is mdsys.spatial_index;

Mapviewer then nicely renders the super/sub scripts as illustrated!

Java API: setting array-type binding variables for a theme

MapViewer supports pre-defined themes that contain query conditions with one or more binding variables. For instance, we can define a theme COUNTIES_BY_STATES that displays all the counties whose State abbreviations are in a list supplied by user at run time.

The query condition for this theme may look like the following:

( state_abrv in (select column_value from table(:1)) )


In other words, when this theme is to be displayed, it will require a list of State abbreviations such as 'CA', 'WA', 'NY' as the value for its query's binding variable. Note that this binding variable itself requires a SQL TABLE type.

So how do you supply such an array of state abbreviation codes to the MapViewer from your Java application? The following shows the sample code that does just that.

String [] values = { "MA","NY","ME","NH" }; //list of state abbreviations
ArrayParameter states = new ArrayParameter("MV_STRINGLIST",values);
Object [] values = new Object[1]; //array containing all binding variable values
values[0] = states;
mapViewer.setThemeBindingParameters("COUNTIES_BY_STATES", values);

Note that basically you must use MapViewer's public ArrayParameter class to supply the list of states (or list of any strings/numbers) for a single table-type binding variable. Because in this case there is only one binding variable in this theme's query, the values array contains only one element, the ArrayParameter instance.

Note also MV_STRINGLIST is a SQL list/table type created by MapViewer automatically in each data source (database schema). Please check the 11g MapViewer user's guide on more information about this pre-created type.

multi-line labels

MapViewer supports labels or annotations that contain a newline char (ASCII char code 10). However by default such characters are ignored by MapViewer during the map text labeling process, and the label text appears in a single line (unless there is a text wrap width specified.)

To force MapViewer to honor the newline chars in a theme's label texts, the theme must use a TEXT labeling style with the "Honor Newline" attribute set to true. This can be done from MapBuilder's TEXT style editor, by simply selecting the Honor newline check box. Now any theme that uses this TEXT style will automatically display any label text containing newline characters with multiple lines.

If your application is written using the MapViewer Java API, and you need to add individual geo-features with multi-line text labels to your map, then additional caution must be taken when constructing the label text with the newline char. Namely, the label text for a feature must be constructed like this:

String textLabel = "LINE 1" + "%26#10;" + "LINE 2";

Typically in an XML document (the Java API eventually will convert your current map request into an XML request before sending it to the MapViewer server), one uses 
 to represent the newline char(10). Because we are sending the entire map request string using HTTP POST from map client to the server, the character '&' itself must be escaped as '%26', hence the odd-looking string %26#10; representing an HTTP-safe newline character.

So this is how you can construct a new feature with this text as its label:

mapViewer.addPointFeature(centreX, centreY, 8265, "C.RED", textLabel, "MY_TEXT_STYLE",
null, null, true);

where MY_TEXT_STYLE should be a TEXT type style with "Honor newline" enabled.

MapViewer 11g R1 production kit released

We are excited to announce that as part of Oracle's Fusion Middleware 11g R1 release, MapViewer 11g R1 is now available for download! Please navigate to OTN MapViewer home page here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/mapviewer/index.html. The 11g R1 software can be found under the Software link on the right side of the page.

Note that this release includes all the features and bug fixes of MapViewer patch 10.1.3.3 for WebLogic server, and we strongly encourage users to upgrade to the 11g R1 release to take advantage of the many new enhancements and a more stable Oracle Maps JavaScript API.

It supports not only WebLogic server (and Oracle AS/OC4J 10.1.3.x), but also Tomcat 6.x and JBoss 4.x. The full certification matrix can be found here:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/mapviewer/htdocs/j2ee_server_support.html

For the complete list of all the new and enchanced features of MapViewer 11g R1, please check out the New and Changed section of the MapViewer User's Guide, also downloadable from the OTN MapViewer home.