Section 9.6. Accessing the Location Server APIs

9.6. Accessing the Location Server APIs

Using the Microsoft Location Server server-side APIs, you can develop a variety of applications that can be run on any Microsoft Location Server; it is important to keep in mind that the applications developed using the Server APIs are purely Microsoft Location Server administrative applications and are not related to any real-time location scenarios. Administrative applications for Microsoft Location Server can be categorized into four major categories:

User management applications

Adding (provisioning ) new users, updating/removing existing users, and so on.

Contact management applications

Adding new contacts, updating current contacts, and removing old contacts for the provisioned users.

Privacy management applications

Managing your enterprise-level privacy settings programmatically, including setting notification modes for provisioned users and setting contact level locatable permissions.

Find Nearby Category management

This category of applications allows you to manage the find nearby categories that can be enabled for finding nearby points of interest. Usually enterprises are required to add, update, and delete the find nearby categories specific to their business needs and the Server API provides a way to programmatically manage them.

Keep in mind that all of the above-mentioned functionality is already available via the Microsoft Management Console (or MMC) for the Microsoft Location Server ; however, there may be instances where you need to write scriptable applications as part of the Location Server administration, which is where the Server APIs will come in handy.

To build such applications, how do you access Location Server APIs ? When you install the Microsoft Location Server successfully, you will see the following Location Server Management APIs installed as part of the server installation:

MS.LocationServer.Types.dll

This assembly contains all the Location Server data types, such as LocatableUser and LocatableContact.

MS.LocationServer.Management.dll

This assembly contains all of the classes that provide methods to manage the Location Server, including the ServerAPI class containing all of the management methods.

MS.LocationServer.Core.dll

This assembly contains classes required by the management API types. It should only be used to add as a reference to your project; you should never have to use the types from this assembly directly in your source code.

To develop Location Server applications, copy the aforementioned assemblies to your development machine and either add them to your local Global Assembly Cache or copy them to your local application Bin folder.

Additionally, to develop Location Server Applications, you also need sufficient privileges to access the Location Server Database. You also should have an SSL root certificate on your development computer to establish a more secure connection to the computer running SQL Server. Note that in the Microsoft Location Server environment, the database server is configured with Microsoft Windows authentication mode. Your enterprise domain alias should have proper access rights to connect to the Microsoft Location Server Database.

Finally, to successfully run a Location Server management application, the account running the application must be a member of the MLSADMINISTRATORS security group.