New Functional Attributes in GeoMedia Pro 6.1

Haven’t had much chance to work with the GeoMedia Pro 6.1 Beta this week. But did want to pass on a list of the new functional attributes and their descriptions – straight out of the GeoMedia Pro 6.1 Release Contents documentation:

ALIGNMENT function

This new function returns the alignment of a text point geometry.

CONVERTTEXTCOLLECTION function

This new function converts a standard text collection composed of single-character and zero-character text point geometries, into a composite text collection representing a single string.

CREATETEXTPOINT function

This new function creates and returns a text point geometry given a point geometry, text string, alignment, and orientation.

DISTANCE function

This new function computes the minimum distance between two geometries.

FORMATATTRIBUTE function

This new function formats an attribute value into a string according to the display format and display precision settings in the extended GeoMedia client metadata for the attribute.  It yields the same presentation of the attribute used throughout the GeoMedia client.  It is applicable only for attributes, not for intermediate expression results or literal operands, as it is dependent upon the attribute metadata.  For other attribute formatting needs, the TEXT function should be used.

MBR function

This new function returns a polygon representing the minimum bounding rectangle of a geometry, orthogonal to the X-axis.

NEWGUID function

This new function creates and returns a unique value of type GUID (globally unique identifier).

NEWLINE constant

This new constant represents a text literal string containing a carriage return and a line feed.

I haven’t had a chance to play with any of them yet. Just reading the descriptions off the top of my head, to me, the three that have the most value are DISTANCE, NEWLINE, and NEWGUID.

For those that use functional attributes – what do you think is the best addition?