MiraMon overview

MiraMon is a project for developing a powerful Geographic Information System (GIS) and a Remote Sensing software in a multiplatform environment for MiraMon Map Browser, and in Microsoft Windows environment for MiraMon Map Reader and MiraMon Professional. The MiraMon Map Server also gives cross-platform service from Windows servers. Its aim is to be a useful, rigorous, fast and easy-to-use tool for displaying, consulting, editing and analyzing raster and vector maps. It has not been made for profit but rather to be used in scientific, educational and environmental management and planning sites. Why MiraMon? explains why this program exists.

The following schema introduces the main possibilities of accessing to geographic information from the different MiraMon applications.

MiraMon Professional: refers to the full MiraMon (licensed) with all the functionalities of spatial analysis, topology building, correction and classification of remote sensing images, connection to large databases such as ORACLE, etc.
MiraMon Universal Map Reader and MiraMon Map Browser for the Internet: they are free tools that offer the most basic functionalities for people who do not intend to make a professional use of the information (visualization of any GIS format, queries by location and attributes, printing).
MiraMon Map Server: efficiently provides WMS, WMTS, WCS, WFS, services that follow the standardization of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and other particularly useful features (file download based on the display area, visualization of the process console, cinematographic animation of time series, etc ).

MiraMon Professional allows you to access propietary datasets on corporate local area network servers (LAN) (including access to MDB, Oracle and Oracle-SDO, MS-SQL Server, ArcSDE, databases), import and export from/to other formats, communicate with GNSS (GPS and alike) receivers in real time or in post-processing, transparently access MMZ/MMZX datasets published by other entities, or browse on bases offered by servers of any provider that follows the OGC standardization. In the last case, MiraMon Servers offer advantages such as a much faster access speed, data and real metadata download (not just screenshots), etc.

The application and the installing procedure are fully compatible with all versions of 32-bit Windows, from Windows 98 (support for Windows 95 has been discontinued even though most functionalities are still operational) to Windows Vista; in the case of Windows 7, 8, 10 and servers, the program works correctly in the 32 and 64-bit versions.

The MiraMon philosophy is not to do a commercial program with all kind of facilities, but to give tools that perform the essential operations. Since programming is a hard work and MiraMon has not been made with lucrative purposes, it has to be limited to the most important functions.

MiraMon Professional does not need sophisticated or costly hardware or software. Any PC with Microsoft Windows 32-bit operating system or higher can execute MiraMon. If you have to access certain databases, such as MDB, you need to have the access to libraries installed with a 32-bit or 64-bit ODBC. If you have installed Office, normally the libraries will already be installed.

You need at least 32 MB of RAM and 1 GB of disk space to run the program. We recommend you to configure the graphic board to show at least 32000 colors simultaneously.

MiraMon Professional opens much more faster than other GIS and Remote Sensing software and only uses 18 Mbyte of RAM. By contrast, other GIS and Remote Sensing software need about 400 Mbyte of RAM although no dataset is still loaded, wasting a lot of memory and slowing down the computer.

From here, the recommended configuration changes according to the needs of every person. The general setup for a correct development of the work would be:

The double of RAM than the biggest file you work with.
Disc space: as much as possible, but a minimum of 2 GB if you store information plus 2 GB in the temporary unit (typically C:).
Processor: MiraMon is a very agile and fast program. Our experience shows that it is better to invest in RAM than in a processor.

Some outstanding features are:

The possibility to create Metadata by means of the Universal Geospatial Metadata Manager (GeM+). MiraMon allows you to document the metadata that could be defined briefly as "data about data", by means of the Universal Geospatial Metadata Manager. This was designed according to the ISO procedure taking into account the European pre-standard of the Comité Européen de Normalisations (CEN), and the North American standard of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and with our own contributions.
13 kinds of raster data supported, which allow storing practically all interesting cartographic data in an adequate file size. These kinds of data are:

a/ Bit, byte, (short) integer, unsigned (short) integer, real, long (integer), all of them in normal or compressed format (except bit). For specific calculations and always in internal calculations a double type is used. These kinds of data allow direct displaying as well as the operations of all the remote sensing programs, geographic information systems and cartography that are included in MiraMon.
In addition to the (IMG) formats that can be opened directly with MiraMon it is also possible to work with other files, such as JPEG, JPEG2000, MrSID, with practically the same tools used in MiraMon formats. It is also possible to read Windows BMP, RLE or DIB files although these files are just simple displays and they don't have any functions if they are not imported to MiraMon format (for example layer clipping, etc). There are MiraMon modules for analytical operations that don't support the formats that are mainly for simple visualisation, for example JPEG, JPEG2000 or MrSID (if necessary import to IMG). However, all these formats are accepted in the rest of the modules such as geometric correction, layer clipping, etc. Details about these formats are found at MiraMon raster format description.
b/ 24-bit color: You can select any RGB composite of byte, integer, real, etc images to get a real color or false color displaying. In systems with modest resources (256 colors) you can force the automatic reduction 24-bit-> 8-bit during file reading and save 8-bit file and optimum palette for further displaying.
Support for rasters with non-conservative compression, like JPEG and conservative and non-conservative compression, like JPEG2000 and MrSID.
Support for rasters with approximately 2100 million columns or rows.
You can access any database through ODBC and (ArcSDE) ESRI geodatabases. From MiraMon version 4.0 on, it is possible to access not only the databases in DBF format, but all databases (ACCCESS, ORACLE, SQL Server, DB2, EXCEL, etc).
From version 7.x on, it is possible to work with extended DBFs, which allow a virtually unlimited number of fields, text field of any length, etc.
You have the chance of working with vectors being topologically structured or with vectors without topology. Vectors of point, line, arc/node and polygon types are supported. Arc layers support several polygon databases being cycled on it (a single arc file is the base for municipalities, regions, etc, using the same graphic database).
Topologically structured formats give advantages about reading quickness, database access (DBF, ACCESS, ORACLE, etc) and "intelligent" access to graphic information: topological relations allow making more complex analysis and, above all, they have special relations amongst objects (island groups joining, being aware of the several holes inside the polygons, etc).
Non-structured formats advantages are creation and edition simplicity and import/export easiness. String type attributes are allowed; on the other hand, this is a natural feature of the structured vectors because we always can refer each vector identifier to a data base field, which can be string, integer, etc. In addition, it is also possible to work with popular formats such as SHP, KML, GPX, etc. Fore more details about these formats see MiraMon vector formats description.
You can work with 3D vectors. From MiraMon version 4.0 on, any vectorial entity can have altitude in each vertex. In previous versions, coordinate Z was an attribute in the database, which was satisfactory for a contour line but not suitable, for example, for a highway or a river, because they change level. Naturally, the formats that support Z do not enforce that it exists, and therefore 2D files have the same size. In this sense, MiraMon provides tools for generating Digital Terrain Models, tools for transferring Z from Digital Terrain Models into vectorial formats, enriching them, etc.
It is possible to access map browsers and servers based on WMS, WMTS,... standards.
You can work with MiraMon Maps compositions of raster and vector files based on your basic files (the map file is small because only contains references to the used files). As they occupy few disk space and they can be easily defined and edited, they are ideal to store final compositions made by several files of type raster and vector under certain conditions about display, scope, etc. They are also useful to store partial views during the development of your projects or to find, the day after, your desktop as you leave it today. For example, during a photointerpretation process needing several days, simply save each day, before leaving MiraMon, your current view as a MiraMon Map; tomorrow you can reopen the map and continue working. The MMM can be converted to MMZ and MMZX for preservation, distribution on the network, sharing, backup, etc. For more details about these formats see MiraMon maps (MMM, MMZ and MMZX) and templates format description.
It is possible to create a Collection of favorite maps, a set of maps (MMM or MMZX/MMZ files) that we usually use and to which we facilitate access in an optimal way, by displaying them on the presentation page of the program. Because a MMM or MMZX/MMZ file can contain any type of geographic information dataset able to be open with MiraMon (raster and vectors of multiple formats, WMS maps located on the Internet, etc), the maps contained in a collection of favorite maps may be of any type you like.
On screen Vector digitizing and editing (erase, join, ), as well over rasters (false colors, orthophotographs, ) as over other vectors, and over the two kinds of layers. If digitization of each object goes on, you can scroll the map or change the zoom level; copying entities and attributes from other layers is also possible.
It is possible to create point, line or polygon type annotations for the quick insertion of small texts, arrows, symbols, etc.
Online query on raster (even compressed, not allowed in other softwares) and vector maps, allowing direct access to selected fields of the associated database.
Query by location (Where am I? What is here?) and by attribute (Where is such feature?), either on raster and vector files. Possibility of exporting the selected features in other files.
All information recovery processes are done over the graphic data base and not over simplifications prepared for fast displaying. So that, even zoom operations allow displaying all the possible information at every time (regarding the graphic board resolution), which is a necessary feature for a geographical information system.
Coordinates are always treated with double precision (15-17 significant figures), which:

a/ Guarantees an adequate computing and showing, even if you work with very large scales (for instance, 1:1000), where submetrical accuracy is necessary.

b/ Avoids the problems of the softwares which work with simple precision (6-7 significant figures), that are forced to work with truncate coordinates (for instance, UTMy), forcing the user to mentally translate when comparing official cartography upon paper with his own database.
Support for color palettes of 64, 256 and 65536 levels for each RGB component, which allows taking advantage from the better color control given by each exit device and each graphic file format: for instance, TIFF files allow 65536 levels, BMP files 256 levels, and Idrisi (DOS) files 64 levels, but MiraMon can work with all these kinds of palettes.
Individualized color, plot, font and icon symbolization tables for each loaded layer (raster or vector), being also possible to edit them. Details can be found at General concepts of MiraMon symbolization.
MiraMon allows importing a wide range of file formats (BMP, TIFF, DXF, etc).
Each new version incoporates new capabilities from the image processing world, remote sensing, geographical information systems or cartography in general.
Professional quality in map prints: any printer or plotter supported by Windows, any file size or complexity, accurate control of scale, position in paper, coordinate ticks, map boxes, etc. Moreover, it has a Printing wizard to help you make printing compositions that can be modified once you have finished by means of Interactive edition of the compositon elements.
It runs into a network (successfully used in Windows, Novell Netware and Cytrix).
Entirely programmed in C (fast and small).

MiraMon is available in three languages: Catalan, Spanish and English.

Guadalupe Barea designed the MiraMon presentation box since version 5.

The modules of this software using JPEG files are based, in part, on the task developped by the "Independent JPEG Group".

MiraMon Map Browser on Internet is free software under GPLv3 license.

MiraMon Map Reader is zero cost software, but not under GPLv3 license.

MiraMon Professional (desktop) is not, as of January 2018, a free distribution software: it is supplied at low rates to individual or corporative users, but it is not free of charge except for associations with wich we have reached an agreement and for students and Academia; its copy, redistribution or installation into Internet or other networks without prior permission of the copyright owner, breaks the intellectual property law.

Finally, licenses for data demo can be purchased at very low price; these licenses only allow opening a limited set of predefined files. For example, you can distribute a CD-ROM/DVD containing MiraMon together with samples of the geographical data you produce (imagery, digital elevation models, conventional topographic maps, etc), all ready to view.

You can follow the evolution of the software through its Versions diary and you can post questions through the English Users Forum (FUM).

If you have observations, suggestions, proposals, , please send it to:

Xavier Pons
Dep. de Geografia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
08193 Bellaterra. Catalonia.
E-mail: contacte@miramon.uab.cat