The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group MapPoint - for the bookshelf Major Keary |
"Location is everything! ... location information has become an essential ingredient of our daily life. Enterprises today consider providing location-based services to their customers an important part of their service offerings." [from the preface of Programming MapPoint in .NET]
For something like a decade Microsoft has been developing a platform for location-enabled and location-aware application development. Their MapPoint division is responsible for MapPoint 2004, MapPoint Web Services, Microsoft Location Server and MSN Virtual Earth.
A 'location-enabled' application can, for example, accept two location points (where you are and where you want to go) and provide a map of the route and driving directions. Another example is an application that can respond to a query about the location of particular kinds of business, hospitals, schools, and so on. A location-enabled application can process geographical-position data.
A 'location-aware' application knows where it is, usually by processing information from some connected device, such as a GPS system, but mobile phone systems are also capable of delivering position data. Location-aware systems are used in on-board navigation devices.
A location application can be 'disconnected', which means it runs on a stand-alone computer that has all the necessary data on, typically, a hard disk. It can also be 'connected', which means a network connection to a server, typically by way of the Internet.
Before rushing off to buy MapPoint there are some things you should know. The relative licences restrict MapPoint 2004 to building Windows applications. There are two editions of MapPoint 2004, one contains map data for North America (U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico), and the other contains map data for Western Europe and some parts of Eastern Europe. MapPoint Web Services currently supports map and location data for North America, Europe, and Pacific Asia (I am not sure what countries 'Pacific Asia' includes). Potential users in this part of the world should check the latest information at http://www.mp2kmag.com, http://blogs.msdn.com/cthota, and http://msdn.com/mappoint. An interesting application is described in Mapping Hacks [O'Reilly, ISBN 0-596-00703-51: it shows how to add maps to Excel spreadsheets with MapPoint.
In the meantime, if you want to develop a location-based application using one or more of the Microsoft technologies, Programming MapPoint in .NET provides detailed coverage of MapPoint 2004, MapPoint Web Service, MapPoint Location Server, and MSN Virtual Earth. Extensive use is made of example code in C# and there are discussions of the APIs for each application.
One does not have to be a professional programmer to derive an understanding of how each of the applications works, and what can be achieved on the development side. Anyone with an interest in electronic cartography should find much of interest. This is an important addition to the literature.
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Chandu Thota: Programming MapPoint in .NET ISBN 0-596-00906-2 Published by O'Reilly, 354 pp., RRP 590.00 incl. GST |
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Reprinted from the March 2006 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
