On GIS / Mapping Software

One latitude degree is about 60 nautical miles, where 1 nautical miles is 1852 meter .  Then of course, the exact distance between two places usually do not matter.  It is the distance, in term of road networks, that matters.  This is where premium mapping software such as Depiction Software and Google Earth Pro shines.  These softwares can automatically geocode addresses, allows the user to connect points by the open street road network, edit some properties, and then export it in the GML (Depiction) or KML (Google Earth).  Not to mention, its graphic can be used for presentation purpose. 

GIS Software in Use:

Depiction on work: Mapping the road network distance and prepare it for linear programming purposes


Each software has its ups and downs.  Depiction is quite inexpensive compared to others, and may allow enough customization to make it useful.  However, as it is mostly used as emergency communication (thus can be used offline) and as simple mapping software, it does not have the business/statistic/subscribed data sources that other expensive GIS software boasts of.  But more often than not, the software may serves as 70% solution to everything.  Google Earth Pro comes next, and has very powerful capabilities and even some extremely valued Google market intelligence data, but is also four times more expensive. 

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Example 1: GML on Excel -- using the RIGHT and LEFT function as well as some coding, to get starting node, ending node, and the length of the arc

Example 2: Ready to use Data for Linear Programming