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I got the trial version of MP 2002 a couple of days ago and have played with it a little bit, so I may be asking something pretty basic.

I searched the help file for a couple of hours for some way to access the latitude and longitude of a location object with no results. I hacked together a solution using distance functions that could have been made to work better, but I chose to search the Microsoft web site for a solution with no results. I came across mp2mag and found several postings to the effect that MP was specifically designed to prevent the user from obtaining this info, but found several work-arounds on mp2mag that work pretty well. (I like the one by Gilles Kohl, but it returns lat lon with precision to only seven or eight significant digits. I may have a refinement that will increase this precision.)

I also found that the MP2002 ActiveX control will not work in MS Access. If you try, it will give you an error message that there is no object in the control. It would make life simpler for me if MP Control could work in Access, but it appears that the control was specifically designed not to work in anything other than VB 6.

I have figured out a rather obvious work-around that lets the control work in MS Access. I suspect that this workaround will allow it to work in FoxPro, Word, Excel, and other container applications that can use other ActiveX controls (I have only tried this in MS Access so far.) I think it can even be made to be data aware so that as you move from record to record in your Access database, the control highlights associated locations or objects.

In searching for an answer to my question I came across some discussion about how the product license will not allow you to use this product to track more than a certain number of vehicles in near real time. I thought this restriction was a little goofy, but then the reasoning for excluding a lat/lon function was goofy as well.

The work-around for using MP Control in Access is so obvious that I cannot believe that Microsoft did not think of it. They had to have designed the control specifically to not work in other container applications.

My question is this:

Given how easy it is to use the MPActiveX Control in other applications despite the design limitation and given the other goofy and screwball licensing issues such as lat/lon function and fleet limitations, is there any sort of languate in the product license that would prohibit or inhibit the use of this control in a container application other than VB6 or VBnet.

Please e-mail any answer, comments, or questions to KTrimble@aol.com. Please put MAPPOINT ACTIVEX CONTAINER in capital letters in the subject field so that I don't accidentally delete it as spam.

Thank you very much