Steven Pushee responds:

Hello,

Let's take this piece at a time:

1. Performance - This is a web service and so suffers from the limitations
that any application that needs to make calls back and forth over the
internet will, specifically in your scenario, performance problems. Right
now the limit on pushpin display is 99 (valid range of array 0-100). The
more info you send across the wire the worse performance times will be. If
you want to display more icons you can draw them yourself using the .NET
GDI+ drawing classes. There's a demo called 'Client Point Drawing' on the
demo site http://demo.mappoint.net/. There's no reason why you can't make
them all clickable if you so wish.

2. Display - Take a average size map, which you would be displaying to an
end user, zoom out to show Atlanta, and now stick your 500+ icons on it,
each of which is probably 16X16 pixels. Often what you'll get is a mess
with icons overlapping and definitely no place to stick labels if you
wanted to, way to busy, way to much information for a customer. Try taking
that same size map showing the entire US and stick your 47,000 icons on it,
then try to make them all clickable, all of which leads me to the next
point...

3. Needs of the user - From your description this sounds like a typical
'Locator' application. You are trying to get the end user into your
'locations' whether they be gas stations or retail stores. I've dealt with
100s of locator apps over the last 3+ years and you need to make them
simple. A huge percentage of these applcations show LESS than 10 locations
at a time (the norm is probably 5). Many of these applications also give
the user a link to get the 'next 5 locations' and so forth and these links
are almost never used by the end user. For a locator customer I assure
you that showing 500+ locations on a map is almost totally USELESS. If
this isn't a 'locator' type of app please fill me in on the details.

4. "I'd like my points to just always be there" - There's no such thing(to
my knowledge). Let's think this through, the map data and your data are
two separate entities. It sounds like you want us to integrate your data
and every other customers data with the map data so your point 'can just
always be there'. If you think that you can find an application our there
that does that then good luck.

Question: "Am I just barking up the wrong tree here with MapPoint?"

Answer: MapPoint is a real good app. Whether it is the best solution
depends on your needs. If I'm right in my assumption that you are building
a 'locator' type of application then MapPoint is a good solution, you just
need to rethink what your customers really need. If this isn't a 'locator'
type of solution please feel to fill me in on the details either here or to
my email (just remove the nospam part).


Steven Pushee

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