MapInfo Professional is a mapping

Cartography

Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.The fundamental problems of traditional cartography are to:*Set the map's...

 software product produced by MapInfo Corporation.

MapInfo Professional has the ability to combine and display, on a single map, data from a variety of sources that are in different formats and projections. The software is capable of overlaying raster and vector layers on the same map; the former can be made semi-transparent, so that they can serve as more than mere backdrops.

MapInfo is popular both in business and the public sector, where a typical user is analyzing pre-built map data layers.

History

MapInfo Corporation was founded in 1986 and its first product was MapInfo for DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

. This software could be customized by using the MapCode development environment which was a C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

-like programming language. The DOS product was eventually discontinued and replaced by MapInfo for Windows.

In 1990 MapInfo was redesigned with an easier-to-use graphical user interface and was made available for the Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, UNIX

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 and Macintosh

Macintosh

The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

 platforms. The MapCode development environment was replaced with a new language MapBasic

MapBasic

MapBasic is a programming language for creation of additional tools and functionality for the MapInfo geographical information system. MapBasic is based on the BASIC family of programming languages....

. Version 4 of the product, released in 1995 , saw the product renamed "MapInfo Professional".

MapInfo Professional is no longer available for the UNIX and Macintosh platforms.

External links

• Review: Mapping the world with GIS wares