Hi,
I saw on a recent post that the new beta of the Desktop coming out will have support for Google Maps, will this support be in the services edition release too or just the Desktop edition?
Thanks!
Support for Google Maps & Virtual Earth
Clint,
Google Maps will be supported also in the services edition and Virtual Earth will not be included in the coming release (around 22th this month)
Thanks,
Ben
Sorry that as the Desktop/Service’s GoogleLayer is not 100% perfect before the deadline; we just exclude it in the latest Beta which released early today. It’s very close though and we will have a separate extension posted it in our developer’ blog in a couple days. Just keep you updated and thanks for Choosing Map Suite!
Ben
Hi, I’m very interested in using the services edition to deliver a combined Virtual Earth map with our own shape data. Do you have an ETA for delivering Google Maps and especially Virtual Earth maps in your services Edition?
Thanks,
Andy
Andy,
Google Maps support will be released on or before Monday. We use the Google Maps Static API and we will have a writeup in the Developers Blog forum showing you how to use it when it gets released. For the Service Edition we have a new GoogleLayer which acts like any other layer but pulls the maps in and includes caching and nicely wraps the Google APIs so you can get roads, sat, and hybrid maps.
As for Virtual Earth we don’t have and ETA because we haven’t researched how we would pull in the the images yet. So far the main push from our users have been for Google Maps. I think there is a Map Point web service we could use and I heard of a Virtual Earth web service but couldn’t find allot of details on it. Also we have to see how easy it is to sign up to get a key for it. If you have any information you can share to kick start this it would help. It would also be great if Microsoft would make it as easy for developers to get keys as Google so you guys can play around with it.
If there is a way we would love to support it. If we can get some good information I would imagine we could have something in a few weeks. Maybe share the work in progress with you earlier. Currently the guy who did the Google Maps stuff is on vacation until the end of next week but I think he could be free t work on it after he gets back. I would imagine it much of the same logic as Google Maps. No promises though.
David
Guys & Gals,
It’s here, download the latest version and try it out. We have some sample code at the link below. The link is to the Developers Blog forum and I recommend subscribing to get e-mail updates to that forum.
We welcome your feedback as this is pretty new and will likely have little issues with it. Currently the documentation isn’t updated and we do not have any How Do I samples yet so if you have questions just let us know. We will have all of this up to date in our next release.
Virtual Earth is the next in line and we will try to get that out soon as well.
gis.thinkgeo.com/tabid/143/afv/topic/aff/16/aft/5155/Default.aspx
David
Andrew,
Virtual Earth / Map Point Maps is next in line so it should be ready in a few weeks.
David
Hi David,
That is really good news as we do need to use VE rather than Google. In fact in Europe it’s considered a better map image due to the fact it’s based on Navteq roads which match our own data better in most of Europe.
Do you know if the VE implementation will have the 600*600 image restriction that your Google implementation has?
Also if it does (and for Google) if we had an aggreement with VE or Google to have large images can you engine cope with this (Ie, does it use the licence key to detemine what the max licenced image can be?)
Another thing is will we be able to use the Web edition (3.0) at the front end (with all it’s nice controls etc) and access the VE or Google map via a service (using your Services edition) so that we grab the image but manipulate it locally in the Web Edition - this gives us a good scalable approach to deliving maps. (This would work like your 2.0 Map Service demo)
One last thing will you be adding a custom base layer so we could write our own base layer code (for example if we wanted to do our own implementation of VE and wanted to then use this as the background (base) layer and use shape data on top then we could use the custom implementation.
Andrew,
I had no idea about the the image quality, thanks. What I did know is that as soon as we have brand X then people ask for brand Y. :-)
I do not believe that there is that limitation for Virtual Earth but I am not sure. You can do some investigation if you like on Microsoft’s site.
On the license part since this is our integration code I am sure we could do whatever we wanted to handle your requirements. It should be easy for us to adjust the 600x600 logic. Also I am not sure exactly what Google or Microsoft encodes in their license key. All I now is what is on their public site.
If you are in the Web Edition we have native support for Virtual Earth and Google Maps already in there. What we just came out with was integration for the Service and Desktop Edition. If the web is what you need then we integrate both directly with only one logo. The hoops we had to jump through was because our client wasn’t using the blessed JavaScript map. Our web edition encapsulates a Google and Virtual Earth map inside of it.
Check out some of the sample with base maps and also there is a sample with Virtual Earth and Google Maps. The samples are in the Overlays section.
websamples.thinkgeo.com/webeditionsamples/
David
With the static maps you are restricted to 1000 per day, which might be fine for some users.
However, could you not host a web control and do the maps that way?
That would get rid of the limits and give you full control.
You could possibly just do things internally and then display the image visually.
Patrick,
I wanted to clarify a few things as to my understanding of the licensing.
It think it might be technically possible to host a map control but I think we would be on thin ice for the licensing. From reading on the web it seems there are ways to extract the tiles directly from Google’s servers and probably bypass this but it is not licensed so we cannot do it.
The restrictions on transaction are at the Google Maps level, we do not enforce any limitations. In fact as per their license we implemented local caching of the images which needs to be set set in the Overlay.
The 1,000 transactions a day is a bit tricky because they say this is not by API key, it is instead by IP address of the caller. They also say that duplicate requests are not counted against you however our caching should take care of this. It also seems from our experience that you do not get the 1,000 a day whenever you want them. The system seems to throttle you so that the 1,000 have to be spread out over the day. If you tried to just create a loop and get your 1,000 in a few minutes it doesn’t seem to work and you will get the over the limit message. If you then wait a few minutes the images start flowing again.
Quote of Google’s License
“Use of the Google Static Maps API is also subject to a query limit of 1000 unique (different) image requests per viewer per day. Since this restriction is a quota per viewer and not per key, most developers should not need to worry about exceeding their quota. Additionally, note that requests of identical images, in general, do not count towards this limit beyond the original request. “
I do wonder if you have a company with 10 desktop applications and they all have the same external IP if they share the same 1,000 transactions? If you need this in a web server then the Web Edition is a much better choice as it implements the Google Javascript Map which does not have this limitation.
From another part of the license it seems you can also use the Google Maps API key. I am sure if you paid for transactions then this would apply and you can get around the limit.
code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/index.html
David
Could I host the web edition in a web service so that I could use the different map types in a winforms application?
Patrick,
This is exactly what our Services Edition is for. You can use it for all of these ‘headless’ servers that are consumed somewhere else. We support a good number of layer including Google Maps. The problem with hosting the Web Edition for this is that the Google Map / Yahoo etc are all using the JavaScript components from the vendors. There really isn’t a way to translate them onto the image. This now all happens client side and would violate their license I would imagine.
What layer types so you use / need? If the Services doesn’t support them we can work to make sure it does.
David