MapForums

I have to make a website where user can look for the stores closest to their address.

So I have a database with all the store addresses and I need to find the 3 closest matches to the clients home address. What would be the best approach?

I was thinking :
- get all latitude and longitude coordinates of the stores and store them locally in a database.
- get the latitude and longitude coordinates of the home address of the client
- find the 3 nearest matches in the database.

Am I thinking in the right way?

Thanks for replying!

Hi,

Yes. I assume you mean the most close in a strait line. And to avoid to much calculations (dont know how many stores there are) you kan seek in the database the store with the most close longitude, then also the record with the most close latitude. Then 1 of these 2 is really the most close. So for each of the 3 you have to do 2 database seek and 2 calculations. If you index on lat and an index on long this can go pretty fast.

__________________
rgds, Wilfried Mestdagh
www.mestdagh.biz
MapPoint coding demo
Order MapPoint 2009 with Routing and User Tools Spreadsheet

Hey, thanks for the reply.
Yes in straight line would do. If I have found those 3 most close stores. How would I get a map from MapPoint on which all 3 stores are located? Is there any function to get like a rectangle from MapPoint? So I could set the boundaries of the rectangle to the two farest stores relative from the users home place. I have been going through the documentation but I couldn't find something like this? How is this done?

Thanks again!!

Hi,

Yes, like this:

__________________
rgds, Wilfried Mestdagh
www.mestdagh.biz
MapPoint coding demo
Order MapPoint 2009 with Routing and User Tools Spreadsheet

Very nice, thx. I can start developing my application now, I think Thanks for enlightening me!

Btw. Groeten vanuit Gent!

Thanks again!

Hi,

Almost neighbours and talking to each other on a server somewhere in US Happy coding !

__________________
rgds, Wilfried Mestdagh
www.mestdagh.biz
MapPoint coding demo
Order MapPoint 2009 with Routing and User Tools Spreadsheet