This tutorial will show you how to connect and open SQL Server spatial table on MapInfo Professional. As you might know, MapInfo supports Microsoft SQL Server spatial database. So, we can easily export and import spatial dataset from MapInfo to SQL Server. Before we can work with SQL Server on MapInfo, there are several things we need to prepare. First, make sure we have an SQL Server database set up. We can use both local and network SQL Server.
If you don’t have Microsoft SQL Server installed on your network, you can follow the following guide to install SQL Server on various operating systems.
- Install Microsoft SQL Server 2019 on Windows Server
- Install Microsoft SQL Server 2019 on Ubuntu 20.04
Once we have the SQL Server database up and running, we can start configure our system so MapInfo Professional can make use of it.
Install SQL Server ODBC Driver
Skip this step if you have installed the SQL Server ODBC driver. You can download the latest ODBC driver for Windows using the link below.
Create a New SQL Server ODBC Connection
Once we have the SQL Server ODBC driver installed, now we need to create a new ODBC connection. This connection will bridge the communication between MapInfo and SQL Server. Go to Control Panel >> Administrative Tools>>ODBC Data Sources (64 bit).
From the ODBC Data Source Administrator window, click Add to create a new data source. Select the ODBC Driver for SQL Server from the list.
Click Finish. Enter the SQL Server details.
Select the authenticity of the login ID. In this case I use the SQL Server authentication.
Now select the default database if you want to.
Click Finish to complete the step.
Now test the connection and make sure it works.
Open SQL Server Database Table from MapInfo Pro
From the MapInfo Pro main window, go to the Home tab and then click Open Database Table. Then it will ask you to select the connection type. Select ODBC.
Click New and then select the data source we created earlier.
Click OK and enter the SQL Server login credential
And then you should see the list of the table in the MS SQL Server
Select the table you want to open. Choose Linked or Live. For a large dataset, Linked would be preferred. And then specify the folder to store the Mapinfo table. Click OK
Now you can open the SQL Server table directly from MapInfo Pro. Thanks for reading this tutorial to Open SQL Server table in MapInfo Professional. See you on the next tutorials.