DotNetKicks.com - Stories tagged with Mapping

Building a Configuration Binder for MEF with POCO Support

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:16:12 GMT

MEF doesn't support POCO injection and XML Configuration off the shelf. Sidar implements an XML congiguration binding mechanism on top of MEF, and the article gives an insight about what to expect from MEF Extensibility models in detail.

Virtual Earth: Polygon Search - Is Point Within Polygon?

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:58:38 GMT

How to perform a polygon search to determine if a given Lat/Long point is within a given Polygon

Gold Coast : WPF and Virtual Earth revisited

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:59:16 GMT

I worked on a more creative/reusable approach to hosting Virtual Earth in a WPF application. If you have looked at any of my previous samples showing how to host Virtual Earth in a WPF app, you'll recall I was using the WinForms WebBrowser control to host an html page that in turn hosts Virtual Earth. Additionally, I used the WebBrowser control's ability to enable communication between managed code and JavaScript. One of the frustrations with this approach is that when using WinForms interop, all WinForms controls take the highest z-order in your app which means you cannot render WPF elements on top of the map. The other thing that has always bothered me about my sample is although it showed how to implement the general approach, it did not wrap all the functionality into a reusable WPF Virtual Earth control. Good news! I have an updated sample.

Plot ZipCode Boundaries on a Map: Part 2 - Import Zip Code (U.S. Censu

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:55:39 GMT

Now that we've Made Sense of the U.S. Census ZCTA ARC/INFO Ungenerate (ASCII) files in Part 1 of this series, we are ready to import the U.S Census ZCTA Zip Code data into a database. In Part 2, we'll create database tables and import the Zip Code Boundary data into those tables in a MS SQL 2005 database.

Plot ZipCode Boundaries on Map: Part1 - Make sense of U.S. Census Data

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:38:31 GMT

The data I'll focus on here is the Census 2000 5-Digit ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) in ARC/INFO Ungenerate (ASCII) format. Even though these files are in their own "special" format, described here, they are still just plain ASCII and easily converted into CSV files to be imported into a database. Well, you could look at the ARC/INFO Generate (ASCII) Metadata Cartographic Boundary File Format definition and write a parser that then saves in in a CSV format. Or, you could just download and use the one I wrote for this article.

Encoding Latitude and Longitude pairs for performance

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:17:27 GMT

In Virtual Earth we use lat/lon pairs everywhere, for pushpins, polylines and polygons but also for map bounds like the current view. This article aims to look at a better way to store and transmit these values. The encoding algorithm used is from Google maps. You will find an explanation of how and why we use it for Virtual Earth.

Virtual Earth + Silverlight Deepzoom (some Examples + Source Code)

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:09:53 GMT

Some great examples of Virtual Earth + Silverlight Deepzoom!

Web.Maps.VE 2.0 Released - Virtual Earth ASP.NET Mapping Server Contro

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:53:36 GMT

Today, I released Web.Maps.VE v2.0!! If you aren't familiar with Web.Maps.VE, it is the industries first ASP.NET Virtual Earth Mapping Server Control. It enables you (the developer) to implement MS Virtual Earth mapping into your ASP.NET web applications by writing only server-side code; there is absolutely no javascript required. It has never been easier to implement MS Virtual Earth mapping.

Silverlight Virtual Earth, Part 2 MultiScaleTileSource

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:59:36 GMT

The feedback from Part 1 has been great! There is definitely interest in this. Shaun Becker sent through this gem that removes my proxy server completely! Yes we now have Silverlight Deep Zoom talking directly to Virtual Earth! And better still I can give you a live demo (need SL beta2 installed - click image to view):

Silverlight Virtual Earth, Part 1 using Deep Zoom - Sample

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:58:15 GMT

Silverlight and Virtual Earth are made for each other, but how best do we go about creating a Virtual Earth control in Silverlight? First up lets look at utilising the existing Deep Zoom control to serve up the base image tiles. In this proof of concept we have little more then a stock MultiScaleImage control hooked up to some appropriately created configuration XML, the output is only 6.8KB for the client! And check out the results on video:

The Thirsty Developer 23: The Virtual Earth Edition

Thu, 29 May 2008 02:26:28 GMT

In this show, we talk with Chris Pietschmann, a developer and a Microsoft MVP on the Virtual Earth platform. Chris tells us how he got started on Virtual Earth back in the beta of version 1.0 and gives us a good overview of the product.

VE Sessions at Where 2.0

Wed, 21 May 2008 16:20:19 GMT

Chris' session was a deep dive on the Virtual Earth Platform and goes into some details about our UltraCam digital aerial camera that we use to capture imagery. He also talks about how we create 3D models and some cool demos as well on Virtual Earth. Finally he does the Silverlight VE control demo that he showed at MIX 08. Steve's session went deep on the Collections stuff that he works on in the Virtual Earth team. He also showed some of his favorite Map Cruncher Collection demos as well as others. There's also a little surprise at the end of this video that if you were around three years ago when Virtual Earth was created you might have seen.

Querying data based on screen bounds? Use a standard grid.

Tue, 20 May 2008 21:10:57 GMT

Previously I simply passed the current bounds to the server, it got the data I needed and passed it back - all was good. The issue was scalability, as hundreds of requests are made these bounds were very unique even if the data they wanted to show was the same. The solution? Create and oversize a standard grid bounds. What this does is makes many more requests identical. It also has a side benefit that slight movements of the map don't even a trigger a new data request.

Virtual Earth 3D: Installing Plug-Ins

Sun, 04 May 2008 03:17:49 GMT

Some types of plug-ins feature special data or rendering, and are intended to be used with a particular website. Others are intended to enhance the experience of all websites, and run every time a user runs VE3D. Most of the samples given so far have been about the former, where the test html page references the plug-in you wish to load. Today we'll talk about the latter. In addition, there is currently a limitation that plug-ins must be installed in the GAC in order to run. This is true regardless of what category the plug-in falls under. End users of a plug-in will need a way of installing the plug-in. Fortunately writing an installer is easy with Visual Studio.

NEW RELEASE: Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper

Sun, 04 May 2008 03:04:35 GMT

I am happy to announce that we have a new release of the Virtual Earth JavaScript Intellisense Helper to bring Intellisense in sync with the new Virtual Earth Map Control 6.1.

Updated Virtual Earth Map Control demo code

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:55:42 GMT

I've update my primary Virtual Earth (VE) map control demos. If you aren't familiar with my VE demos, they are essentially all the samples from the Virtual Earth Interactive SDK redone in a Visual Studio solution. My directory structure maps almost identically to the steps treeview in the Interactive SDK:

FindNearRoute with Virtual Earth 6.1 and SQL Server 2008

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:51:32 GMT

Just last night we released a minor update to Virtual Earth. Besides the fact that we can now generate the tokens for the Customer Identification and thus the transaction counting not only in the production- but also in the development environment we return now the complete route-geometry when you calculate a route. This feature is considered to be a 'premium feature' and is only available to enterprise customers who use the customer identification. Having access to the route-geometry allows us for instance to have multiple routes on a map... ...or together with a spatial-enabled database such as SQL Server 2008 to implement a feature which returns points of interest in a buffer around a route. Let's have a look at the latter.

Virtual Earth: Center Map to Shape during OnClick Event

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:40:45 GMT

Here's a short, simple example of wiring up Virtual Earth to zoom/pan the map to showing the best fit to center on a specific Shape object that is clicked on by the user.

Virtual Earth: Restrict Map to Specified Viewable Area

Sun, 04 May 2008 02:37:59 GMT

This example demonstrates the ability to restrict the viewable area (and impose map boundaries) of a Virtual Earth map to be within a specified distance from the maps original center point (at time of initial load), and restrict to a maximum zoom level. Why might you want to do this? There are times when you may want to restrict your users from possibly getting "lost" when viewing your data on a map. Also, you may want to restrict the user from panning around the globe in an attempt to reduce the number of Virtual Earth Map Transactions that you'll end up paying for. Whatever the reasoning is; I've actually had this functionality requested a few times by clients, so I thought I'd write up a simple example.

Virtual Earth: Draw a Circle Radius Around a Lat/Long Point

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 07:00:33 GMT

I get requests on how to draw radius' around points on the map. And, up until now, I never needed to do it myself, so I didn't have a code snippet to do it. I did a search and quickly found an example over at viavirtualearth on how to do it in an older version of Virtual Earth. Other than being coded for an older version of Virtual Earth (and incompatible with VE6); it's coded to only handle drawing a radius in Kilometers. So, I decided to upgrade the code example to support VE6, and support both Miles and Kilometers. I'm also converted it to make use of the GeoCodeCalc.ToDegrees function that I originally posted in my "Calculate Distance of User-Drawn Polyline" post.

Virtual Earth: Calculate Distance of User-Drawn Polyline

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 05:29:37 GMT

A couple days ago I posted some code to "Calculate Distance Between Geocodes in C# and JavaScript", so today I decided to post a small sample program that shows a more "real world" example of puting that code to use. Here's a small program I wrote (in pure HTML and JavaScript) that allows the user to draw a polyline, and it automatically calculates the total distance between the points being plotted.

Virtual Earth: Dynamically Load InfoBox Using ASP.NET AJAX

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:15:21 GMT

Loading alot of pushpins on the map can slow down your page in two ways: 1) Page load times can be slowed down, and 2) loading pushpins via ajax can be slow. To improve the performance (as in download and database query times) of loading pushpins on the map, you can load the Pushpin Shapes Title and Description on the fly. This allows you to only load the Pushpins Title and Description as it's needed, thus reducing the amount of data you need to send down to the client when initially loading your pushpins.

Getting Started with Virtual Earth and ASP.NET AJAX

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:40:53 GMT

About a month ago, I wrote an article titled "Virtual Earth: Getting Started - Adding a basic Map to a page". In that article I explained the basics of using Virtual Earth with plain HTML and JavaScript. This time I'm going to explain the basics of using Virtual Earth with ASP.NET AJAX.

Web.Maps.VE - Virtual Earth Without JavaScript, plus .NET 3.5 Support

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:46:06 GMT

Yesterday, I released the fourth update release (v1.00.04) of my Web.Maps.VE component. The main feature addition in this update is the addition of .NET 3.5 support. Web.Maps.VE is an ASP.NET AJAX Virtual Earth Mapping Server Control. It abstracts out the need to write JavaScript when implementing Virtual Earth mapping within an ASP.NET application. Web.Maps.VE allows you to focus more of your time on implementing features that users want, rather than having to deal with the hassles of JavaScript.

Virtual Earth: Align Mini Map in the Top Right corner of the Map

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:44:48 GMT

If you take a look at maps.live.com you'll see the Mini Map is in the Top Right corner of the map. Virtual Earth doesn't have any alignment options built in when showing the Mini Map. It just allows you to position the mini map using x and y offset coordinates relating to the top left corner of the map. This makes it really easy to show the mini map in relation to the top left corner, but what makes this tricky is the dashboard is already there. Here's small example I wrote up on how to align the Mini Map in the Top Right corner of the map. This code also hooks into the Maps onresize event so it can move the Mini Map to the desired location when ever the map is resized.