We haven't developed support for this yet because shape-based heat mapping isn't a great visualisation, being misleading, because smaller areas appear less significant than larger areas. However, depending on demand, we may add this in future. Anyone else who needs this feature should vote here.

I should add that this issue has been requested by several clients and is highly likely to make it into 2.7 or 2.8.

This idea comprises:
1. Importing shape data from external files. Or, allowing drawing simple boundaries by hand.
2. Displaying the shape data as a base map, or as an overlay over an existing map.
3. Associating regions with values in the data, and colouring appropriately.

For (1), initially we would provide support for just one popular 3rd party format (Shapefile), as there are freely available tools for converting to this format. We might also use CSV or IOK to store region data with category values as required by (3).
For (2), this would work either for 2.6+ online tiled maps, or traditional Omniscope vector maps, providing both the Omniscope map view and the imported shape data were in standard WGS84 lat/lon coordinates.
For (3), the regions in the imported shape data would need to have unique identifiers, for this to work, and the identifier values would need to be present in the data file being visualised. For example, this might be the ISO country code, for a country boundary. DataManager could be used to transform/merge identifiers into the correct format for a shape file.

My initial post with the GISCO boundaries link from EC Euro Stat site seems to be moved or taken off their site and hidden away. I'm not experienced with GIS software so employing shapefiles are still foreign to me but I do know the ones of interest and hopefully to be supported in Omniscope.

The Boundary-Line open product:

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/boundary-line/index.html

Postcode boundaries will also be of great interest but I don't have an open source for it, the below image link is what it would look like but it would be nice to have those shapes supported and if it can get to postal districts or even as detailed as sectors will be even better.

http://www.direct-marketing-lists.co.uk/postcode_map.htm

As for the overall objective, I would like to be able to produce similar visualizations as that on the census profiler, maybe not as detailed though as it looks to go down to quite small postcode areas.

http://www.censusprofiler.org/

Thanks for the detail - very useful. The first two links concern parts 1 and 2 of this idea - importing ESRI™ Shapefile data for use either as a map or a map layer.

The last link concerns part 3 - data-driven region fills.

See related discussion of importing ESRI shape and layer files here:

http://forums.visokio.com/discussion/comment/6170/#Comment_6170

Visokio are now collaborating closely with ESRI on improving integration, starting with SHP shapefile import, which is now working in version 2.8. Please let us know your most important use cases and submit sample files for use in demos and testing. You will have to upgrade your Forum account to Alpha Partner access discussions relating to this version 2.8 feature set under development.

I've mainly been using the Boundary-line shapefiles in ArcGIS and joining data according to local areas districts, counties or wards names/IDs.

Older shapefiles which may be necessary from edina for historic comparison:
http://edina.ac.uk/ukborders/description/easyd_datasets.shtml

The cases vary but example data which I would look to use with shapefiles are the national census outputs:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-286262

The majority will only go down to districts, though ward data for London specifically is available for certain data sets:
http://data.london.gov.uk/search/node/ward

Also examples of uses would be similar to that which is being produced by the UK's Office of National Statistics:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/interactive/index.html

Daniel, thanks for the links. It would be helpful to have a clearer picture of what data modelling tasks you intend to do - for example, overlay points on top of regions, select points by regions, colour points by region attributes, etc. etc.

All of the above, sorry for sounding greedy but in some manner or form I've used these techniques in ArcGIS and R.

Probably the first I would like to see in Omniscope would be the basics such as colouring shape regions. The remainder can be done through R and fed into Omniscope to be coloured by region I would expect.

The next interesting thing would be different methods of interpolation which looks to treat point data as continuous space often seen in temperature maps ie:

http://www.wmo.int/pages/publications/bulletin_en/archive/60_2_en/images/60_2_Tufa_3_big.jpg

The map view already has raster but that generally makes things too 'squarey' and the shapes change with the zoom.

Most of this has now been implemented in version 2.8. Those of you with ESRI subscriptions should sign up as Alpha partners on this Forum because Omniscope version 2.9 alpha will progress ESRI API Connector web services, which include large numbers of both free and paid data services. For example, GISCO, NUTS, Eurostat etc etc.

Feel free to start new threads picking up more advanced aspects of this thread.