MapGuide 3.0 feature showcase: Bumping the version number

So now you know. The next major release of MapGuide will be MapGuide Open Source 3.0

Why the major version bump to 3.0? It's mainly for us to signify to you (the MapGuide application developer) that we are breaking free from some of the cruft and baggage that has accumulated in MapGuide over the years.

This is the cruft that you will no longer see in MapGuide Open Source 3.0

Goodbye blank MgMap constructor

The blank MgMap constructor existed in the MapGuide API from the very beginning. A new overload of the MgMap constructor (introduced with RFC 9) allows access to various convenience APIs in MgMap, but such APIs can only be available with the use of the correct constructor: The one that is not blank.

Having two different behaviours based on which constructor you use kind of violates the principle of least astonishment. Even though we have deprecated the blank MgMap constructor and try to leverage Java/C# language features and having a dedicated blog post about it to try to communicate this fact to you, there's nothing actually stopping you from using the blank MgMap constructor and having convenience APIs in MgMap throw exceptions back at you as a result.

With the 3.0 release, we removed the blank MgMap constructor and associated verbose APIs, eliminating this confusion once and for all. The convenience APIs will now always work because there will now only be one MgMap constructor to use instead of two.

Goodbye DWF eMap support

DWF eMap is basically the DWF analogue to the MapGuide 6.5 ActiveX viewer of yore. It allows your maps to be viewed in the AJAX viewer using a DWF viewer ActiveX plugin that can consume eMap data from MapGuide.

The problem (beside the ugly ActiveX) is that eMap support has long since been removed in the DWF Toolkit. You needed Autodesk Design Review 2009 or older (AFAIK) to have a DWF viewer ActiveX control that supports eMap data. We've had to stick with an ancient version of the DWF Toolkit in order to support this feature. As a side effect of an ancient DWF Toolkit, this presents DWF interoperability issues with Autodesk products with newer versions of the DWF Toolkit. We've had stories of DWF files plotted from MapGuide crashing current versions of Autodesk Design Review.

With the 3.0 release, we've upgraded the DWF Toolkit to the latest version (7.7) and removed DWF eMap API and viewer support. If you are still somehow using this eMap functionality, this is the end of the line for you. You should seriously consider migrating to our current viewer offerings, or stay on the 2.6 series if this is not an option.

For more details of what APIs have been cut, you can consult MapGuide RFC 139