Chapter 5. Programming MapPoint Web Service

MapPoint 2004 offers extensive capabilities for building location applications, but you can only develop Windows desktop applications using MapPoint 2004 APIs. Moreover, map data must be available locally for MapPoint 2004 applications to work. If you want to develop applications for web or mobile devices, MapPoint 2004 is obviously not an option. However, if you want to develop location-based applications for web and mobile devices, you are not out of luckthat's where MapPoint Web Service comes in.

The MapPoint Web Service is a Microsoft-hosted XML web service that is fully compliant with SOAP. The MapPoint Web Service APIs are exposed via the standard Web Service Description Language (WSDL) that can be used to develop applications using any SOAP/XML-aware programming language. Because of that, MapPoint Web Service transcends traditional boundaries to become a platform-agnostic programming tool with which you can develop a variety of location-based applications.

In this chapter, I will explain how the MapPoint Web Service works and how to get started with your development environment. Since the MapPoint Web Service is SOAP protocol-compliant, it is inherently communication protocol-agnostic (working across HTTP, FTP, etc.); however, in this chapter, as well as Chapters 68, I will be using the HTTP protocol as the medium of communication.

Finally, before we get into the full details of MapPoint Web Service programming, I want to remind you that the MapPoint Web Service is a subscription-based web service, which means that you will be charged for the usage of the MapPoint Web Service APIs. I strongly recommend reading the end user license agreement (EULA) for more details on the tarrif and details on how the API calls are charged. Don't panicaccessing MapPoint Web Service in the staging environment is absolutely free, so you do not need to pay for accessing the APIs.