[AccessD] OT? Mappoint - Virtual Earth - and Access Db

Borge Hansen pcs at azizaz.com
Wed Sep 20 10:45:49 CDT 2006


Hello List,
This may be a somewhat OT, but here it is:

I've been asked to come up with a solution for showing information coming from an Access Db onto Maps.

In a nutshell :
We have Acme Enterprises that operates a number of Acme Centres over a large geographical area.
Around 20,000 people are employed in total.
Each day around 2.5% of the work force due to sickness and other reasons for not turning up need to be replaced by relief staff.
We have : permanent relief staff, casual relief staff and relief sourced through agencies

We need to show various types of information on a map for a particular region:
- all Acme Centres in the region (pinned to their location address)
- For a particular Acme Centre the available pool of permanent and casual relief staff (each pinned to their home address) and
various info about each person (available or not, highest qualification (worker, team manager, centre manager) etc.
.... etc....

So the web page showing a map has to be rendered in a suitable zoom level, and data pulled from an Access Db will give the necessary
information to create some pushpins in various shapes and colours ... off the top of my head for example: for staff various shape
according to qualification and different colour according to whether available or not; and yet another shape for displaying an Acme
Centre.....

Now, the question is what tools to use?

I've been just starting looking into (i.e. reading about mostly) Mappoint 2006, Mappoint Web Services and Virtual Earth - and all is
totally new to me.

Microsoft's Mappoint 2006 only have maps for North America and Europe.
We need it for Downunder!
As I understand it it's a desktop application with a lot of functionality :
- Enter an address and it will give you the latitude, longitude coordinates
- Different types of pushpins to display on the maps
- Many built in functions and 3rd party add ins for performing a wide variety of tasks and optimization calculations

?? Does anyone know if and when an Australia / New Zealand map set will be available?

Then there is MS Mappoint Webservices - I've downloaded the SDK and established a developer account with MS and will have a closer
look.... but I understand a subscription license is somewhere in the five digit figures.... Any one having experience with this?

Then there is MS Virtual Earth..... which is the application (?) I've been poking at the most:

I came across the following example of overlaying pushpins from Mappoint 2006 onto Virtual Eath Map:
http://www.gilleskohl.de/mappoint/PinsToFile2006/Samples/Addressestable.htm

Gilles' add-in can be found here: http://www.gilleskohl.de/mappoint/PinsToFile2006/

I imported the source from the htm web page above into Frontpage, allowed active content, and pre-viewing it in the browser I get
the same map rendering.
Too easy...

But I can't make use of his pinstofile function because... no map set for Australia!

I read the following article by Chandu Thota introducing Virtual Earth APIs:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/09/EarthlyDelights/default.aspx

which gives a very good intro to the whole subject...

Now, instead of viewing all of US as the starting map by changing (from the source view of Addressestable.htm) :
the ShowMap function to the following, we are now rendering a map starting in our backyard and zoomed to a suitable level

*****code snip *****
         function ShowMap()
         {
            map = new VEMap('pinsToFileMap');
            map.LoadMap(new VELatLong(-28.000344,153.408422), 15, "r", false);

            AddPins();
         }
***********************

and if you want some pushpins to appear on the eastcoast of Australia you can try to insert these lines in the function Addpins()


****snip****   beware of linebreaks
            AddPin(-28.025344,153.412311,'Sherri Hart Trey Research','<table><tr><td><b>Street Address</b></td><td>501 Corporate
Centre Drive</td></tr><tr><td><b>City</b></td><td>Franklin</td></tr><tr><td><b>State</b></td><td>TN</td></tr><tr><td><b>ZIP
Code</b></td><td>37067</td></tr><tr><td><b>Country</b></td><td>US</td></tr></table>','000');
            AddPin(-28.050344,153.412311,'Paul West Litware, Inc.','<table><tr><td><b>Street Address</b></td><td>312 Walnut
Street</td></tr><tr><td><b>City</b></td><td>Cincinatti</td></tr><tr><td><b>State</b></td><td>OH</td></tr><tr><td><b>ZIP
Code</b></td><td>45202</td></tr><tr><td><b>Country</b></td><td>US</td></tr></table>','000');
            AddPin(-28.075344,153.412311,'John Fortune Wide World Importers','<table><tr><td><b>Street Address</b></td><td>205 North
Williamsburg</td></tr><tr><td><b>City</b></td><td>Bloomington</td></tr><tr><td><b>State</b></td><td>IL</td></tr><tr><td><b>ZIP
Code</b></td><td>61704</td></tr><tr><td><b>Country</b></td><td>US</td></tr></table>','000');
            AddPin(-28.100344,153.412311,'Don Funk Woodgrove Bank','<table><tr><td><b>Street Address</b></td><td>One City Place
Drive </td></tr><tr><td><b>City</b></td><td>Creve Coeur</td></tr><tr><td><b>State</b></td><td>MO</td></tr><tr><td><b>ZIP
Code</b></td><td>63141</td></tr><tr><td><b>Country</b></td><td>US</td></tr></table>','000');
            AddPin(-28.125344,153.412311,'Kim Akers A. Datum Corporation','<table><tr><td><b>Street Address</b></td><td>8300 Norman
Center Drive</td></tr><tr><td><b>City</b></td><td>Bloomington</td></tr><tr><td><b>State</b></td><td>MN</td></tr><tr><td><b>ZIP
Code</b></td><td>55437</td></tr><tr><td><b>Country</b></td><td>US</td></tr></table>','000');
            AddPin(-28.150344,153.412311,'Pat Coleman Baldwin Museum of Science','<table><tr><td><b>Street Address</b></td><td>10260
SW Greenburg Road </td></tr><tr><td><b>City</b></td><td>Portland</td></tr><tr><td><b>State</b></td><td>OR</td></tr><tr><td><b>ZIP
Code</b></td><td>97223</td></tr><tr><td><b>Country</b></td><td>US</td></tr></table>','000');
            AddPin(-28.175344,153.412311,'Elizabeth Boyle Lucerne Publishing','<table><tr><td><b>Street Address</b></td><td>205
108th Ave NE </td></tr><tr><td><b>City</b></td><td>Bellevue</td></tr><tr><td><b>State</b></td><td>WA</td></tr><tr><td><b>ZIP
Code</b></td><td>98004</td></tr><tr><td><b>Country</b></td><td>US</td></tr></table>','000');
            AddPin(-28.200344,153.412311,'John Kelly Adventure Works','<table><tr><td><b>Street Address</b></td><td>One Perimeter
Park South</td></tr><tr><td><b>City</b></td><td>Birmingham</td></tr><tr><td><b>State</b></td><td>AL</td></tr><tr><td><b>ZIP
Code</b></td><td>35243</td></tr><tr><td><b>Country</b></td><td>US</td></tr></table>','000');
*********

So, what I am thinking at this point is that the API set for Virtual Earth appear easy to work with and it's free!

????
But:

1) How do we get latitude and longitude coordinates for a large number of records?
Is there any third party software that will go through address information file and return lat long coordinates for an Australian
map set?

2) Sample of code structure that will read Access table / query and give us data - similar to the data 'hardcoded' into the function
"function AddPins()" in the htm source code:

.....
Thanks for reading on .... If any one has input or pointers where to get more information .... much appreciated.....

Regards
Borge









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