Section 10.3. Comparing Location Server API to Location Web Service API

10.3. Comparing Location Server API to Location Web Service API

So far in this chapter, you have seen both Microsoft Location Server Web Service APIs and the Location Server Management APIs and learned how to program with them. Since most of the API functionality is common across these two sets of APIs, I thought it would be a good idea to wrap up the discussion with a comparison table by pointing out key differences as shown in Table 10-3.

Table 10-3. API comparison chart

API feature	Available with Location Web Service	Available with Location Web Server
Get Real-time Location	Yes	No
Add Contacts	Yes	Yes
Update Contacts	Yes	Yes
Delete Contacts	Yes	Yes
Set Visibility	Yes	Yes
Add Nearby Categories	No	Yes
Update Nearby Categories	No	Yes
Delete Nearby Categories	No	Yes
Get Nearby Categories	Yes	Yes
Provision Users	No	Yes
Update Provisioned Users	No	Yes
Delete Provisioned Users	No	Yes
Find Provisioned Users	Yes	Yes

It is important to keep in mind that the applications built with the Server APIs always run in the context of the Microsoft Location Server Administrator, while the applications built with the Location Server Web Server always run in the context of a provisioned user.