Thanks for the help i have been getting on this forum so far - but i think it is game over for me and mappoint

Basically, we have this app that does some real time stuff that needs up to 60 autoroute calculations per second (just travelling time).

For starters, mappoint using ActiveX (COM) will only fire back about 1
route calc per 0.7 seconds - thats on a dual 2.8gig pentium system, 1GB RAM, anything slower, forget it.

Also, the ULA seems to forbid the use of the software to do automated route calculations (cynical ones might say 'well that's why its soooooo
slooooowwww' )

So i'm back on the drawing board - our inhouse application is ready but for a reliable autoroute call . I have 2 systems in the offerring (mapquest being one) but costs are 20K USD plus.

Before i am forced to write the cheque and abandon MP, anyone got any last minute ideas?

Thanks and Regards

ChaosT

Hi,

I never seen that part in the end user agreement. Are you sure of that ?

Anyway for such an amount of route calculations you need it is indeed slow if you serialize it. Can you not execute a lot of them in parallel ? Eventually in multiple threads (threads will not nececarly gains speed, it could even be the way around, but it can be tryed).

I think you heve such amount in peaks, but not 24/7, do you can make a separate object to do the calculation with his own invisible mappoint control in it, and when you need more calculations, you just create more objects of that type.

so thats all idea I hve at the moment... If you decide to leave, then at least all I can say is 'good luck with the pjoject'...

Wilfried,

Thanks for the help (again!)...

I have tried running it in parrellel using multiple copies of this script (php):

Code:

$ex = new COM("MapPoint.application");
$ex->Visible = FALSE;
$ex->UserControl = FALSE;

$objMap = $ex->ActiveMap;
$objRoute = $objMap->ActiveRoute;

$start = $objMap->GetLocation($s_lat, $s_lon); //Lat - Lon coords
$end = $objMap->GetLocation($e_lat, $e_lon);

$objRoute->Waypoints->Add($start);
$objRoute->Waypoints->Add($end);

$route = $objRoute->Calculate();
$time = $objRoute->TripTime();

but each time it runs, it starts a new instance of mappoint.exe and begins chewing up resources, any more than 3 instances at a time, all doing route calcs kills the system.

Is there a better way to run mappoint then?

Parallel calculations are only going to be of benefit if you have multiple cpus. The main slow bit in route find is the intense computation being performed - and not waiting on hardware.
When you look at what is required to find the best route, MapPoint does a pretty good job of doing it quickly.

Back to multiple calculations: match the number of MapPoint instances to the number of cpus in use. I haven't tried this, but this should give you the best speed. I would consider hyper-threaded cpus as one cpu - let the OS take up the extra few percent of theoretical slack.


Richard

Hi,

Also running with a hidden or minimized map saves some memory witch gains speed again.