I currently have an application which keeps track and schedules sales staff visits to customers.

I need a way of calculating distances between 2 postcodes (uk) and to intergrate this into my application. Can this be done through mappoint? I don't want to use a subscription based product - can I just purchase the Mapoint 2004 European Edition to do this?

Thanks in advance

Hi,

yes calculating distances, routedescription etc is programaticly easy to do with mappoint. There is however 1 restriction if you use web for it, that is if you want to display the maps itself over a HTTP server, then I think every user has to have a licence of mappoint.

Please someone correct me if I'm wrong about the licence?

If you want the straight line distance then you can create two Location objects, each representing one of your post codes, then you can do it like this (C#)

Code:

object iIndex = 1;
Location loc1 = (Location)map.FindPlaceResults("postcode 1").get_Item(ref iIndex);
Location loc2 = (Location)map.FindPlaceResults("postcode 2").get_Item(ref iIndex);

double dblDist = loc1.DistanceTo(loc2);

You can also use MapPoint's ability to calculate driving distance. The following code snippet (C#) shows this.

Code:

object iIndex = 1;
map.ActiveRoute.Waypoints.Add(map.FindPlaceResults("postcode 1").get_Item(ref iIndex), "");
map.ActiveRoute.Waypoints.Add(map.FindPlaceResults("postcode 2").get_Item(ref iIndex), "");
map.ActiveRoute.Calculate();
double dblDist = map.ActiveRoute.Distance