Is MapSurfer.net right for me?

[Wayne Bailey]

I am trying to gather knowledge about several different products available for providing a mapping solution.  I was wondering if anyone with lots of MapSurfer.net experience could give advice on whether it is a good tool of choice to meet my requirements.

Here are the high level requirements for my project:

1) Windows desktop application hosting the solution will be built using VisualStudio C# WinForms (or WPF).

2) Mapping functionality will be rendered from within the desktop application.

3) At application install time, or shortly thereafter, a setup and/or install concept of operations would include the gathering/download of all the underlying data content associated with a rectangular region of a given city or given county in the USA.  This map data would be persisted on the Windows client machine for later reference by the desktop application.  Once this initial provisioning of the required data is complete, the Windows machine would no longer need access to the internet.  In other words, any connectivity requirements for gathering mapping data would only need to be accomplished once at the beginning of the install process.

4) The desktop application (that supports zooming and panning the map) would display the underlying visual mapping information and would also be able to display location pushpins (with text labels and possibly artwork) given a list of lat/long coordinate points.  The desktop application might need to refresh the pushpin locations as frequently as every 1 to 3 seconds as new location information becomes available from a data provider that is external to the desktop application.

5) The accuracy of the lat/long position of the superimposed pushpins on top of the map is mission critical.

Thanks in advance if anyone is able to give advice on the above requirements for MapSurfer.net.

Sincerely,

Crew Bailey

[Runge]

Dear Crew Bailey,

Sorry for my late reply.

I am trying to gather knowledge about several different products available for providing a mapping solution.  I was wondering if anyone with lots of MapSurfer.net experience could give advice on whether it is a good tool of choice to meet my requirements.

Here are the high level requirements for my project:

I will try to answer your questions.

1) Windows desktop application hosting the solution will be built using VisualStudio C# WinForms (or WPF).

Yes, it is possible. Morever, MapSurfer.NET package has a windows control that allows moving/panning/zooming of the map.
 

2) Mapping functionality will be rendered from within the desktop application.

see 1)
 

3) At application install time, or shortly thereafter, a setup and/or install concept of operations would include the gathering/download of all the underlying data content associated with a rectangular region of a given city or given county in the USA.  This map data would be persisted on the Windows client machine for later reference by the desktop application.  Once this initial provisioning of the required data is complete, the Windows machine would no longer need access to the internet.  In other words, any connectivity requirements for gathering mapping data would only need to be accomplished once at the beginning of the install process.

MapSurfer.NET supports many data formats (shapefiles, geojson, etc) and allows reading data from different databases (postgresql, mysql, etc).
To implement the given scenario, one needs to prepare a map style (cartocss or native xml format) and properly configure data connectors to reference data files.
In MapSurfer.NET Studio (a prototype of your app), you can try out to open one of the [Tilemill projects](https://github.com/springmeyer/tilemill-examples). During the very first load of a map, all referenced data files will be automatically downloaded and saved on a local disk for further usage.

 

4) The desktop application (that supports zooming and panning the map) would display the underlying visual mapping information and would also be able to display location pushpins (with text labels and possibly artwork) given a list of lat/long coordinate points.  The desktop application might need to refresh the pushpin locations as frequently as every 1 to 3 seconds as new location information becomes available from a data provider that is external to the desktop application.

 Visualization of additional overlay information such as pushpins/markers or scale bars can be done through implementing a custom layer class for the aforementioned windows control (see MapViewer class in MapSurfer.Windows.Forms.dll).

5) The accuracy of the lat/long position of the superimposed pushpins on top of the map is mission critical.

They accuracy of the pushpins will depend on the scale of the map. In other words, the larger the scale, the more accurate is the positioning of the pushpin.

Best regards,
Max