MapPoint Web Service Overview

MapPoint Web Service Overview

Microsoft MapPoint Web Service is an XML Web service with a SOAP API. You can use MapPoint Web Service to add location-based functionality to your applications, including high-quality maps, location finding, and routing capabilities.

MapPoint Web Service consists of four constituent services: common, find, render, and route. This section provides an overview of each of these services.

Note A second XML Web Service, called Customer Data Service, allows you to upload, download, and manage custom data sources, including points-of-interest and polygon data. For more information, see Introducing Customer Data Service.

Common Service

The common service contains classes, methods, and properties that are common to the find, route, and render services, or are basic utility functions. The common service methods are:

  • GetCountryRegionInfo—Returns the country or region name, entity ID, latitude and longitude coordinates, codes, and language for a specified entity.

  • GetDataSourceInfo—Returns the functionality and name of a specified data source.

  • GetEntityTypes—Returns the entity types and their corresponding properties contained in a specified data source.

  • GetGreatCircleDistances—Returns an array of great circle distances, in kilometers or miles, between specified points.

  • GetVersionInfo—Returns the descriptive name and the related version number of the current version of MapPoint Web Service.

Find Service

You can use the find service to locate addresses, geographic entities, latitude and longitude coordinates, and points of interest from MapPoint Web Service data, as well as parse addresses and return location information for a specified latitude and longitude coordinate.

The find service methods are:

  • Find—Returns a list of found geographic entities based on search options, in order of how well the results match the search criteria.

  • FindAddress—Returns a list of found addresses based on an input address, in order of how well the results match the search criteria.

  • FindByID—Returns a list of found points of interest based on entity IDs.

  • FindByProperty—Returns a list of points of interest based on entity property values.

  • FindNearby—Returns a list of found points of interest based on entity type, in order of proximity to a selected point.

  • FindNearRoute—Returns a list of points of interest based on entity type within a specified distance from a route.

  • FindPolygon—Returns polygons that exist within a specified area or that contain a specified latitude and longitude coordinate.

  • GetLocationInfo—Returns a list of addresses and geographic entities at a specified latitude and longitude coordinate within a specified data source.

  • ParseAddress—Parses a specified address string and returns an Address object.

Note For a list of the available geographic entities by data source for use with the Find and GetLocationInfo methods, see MapPoint Data Sources.

To use the FindNearby, FindByID, FindByProperty, and FindNearRoute methods with your own location data, the data must be geocoded (that is, have latitude and longitude coordinates), be in a format that MapPoint Web Service can recognize, and uploaded to your custom data source on the MapPoint Web Service servers. You can geocode and upload your data to our servers from the MapPoint Web Service Customer Services site (https://mappoint-css.live.com/CSCV3/) or using the Customer Data Service SOAP API. Visit the site for information about formatting requirements and how to upload the data. For more information about uploading your data programmatically, see Developing with Customer Data Service.

Render Service

You can use the render service to draw maps of routes and locations, place pushpins, draw polygon regions, set the map size and map view, select points on a map, get location information about points and polygons on a map, and pan and zoom a rendered map.

Note MapPoint Web Service draws maps by using an orthographic projection centered on the center point of any given map and based on WGS84 datum.

The render service methods are:

  • ConvertToLatLong—Converts pixel coordinates to latitude and longitude coordinates on a specific map, returning the latitude and longitude for a pixel on a rendered map.

  • ConvertToPoint—Converts latitude and longitude coordinates to pixel coordinates on a specific map, returning the pixel coordinates for a latitude and longitude on a rendered map.

  • GetBestMapView—Returns the best map view for a selected location or set of locations. The best map view is the largest scale map that contains all the desired locations.

  • GetMap—Returns map images, map views, and hot area definitions based on map options.

  • GetLineDriveMap—Returns map images, map views, and hot area definitions based on map options.

You can render maps including your own custom icons, polygons, and points-of-interest. To use your own data with MapPoint Web Service, you upload it to our servers from the MapPoint Web Service Customer Services site (https://mappoint-css.live.com/CSCV3/). Visit the site for information about formatting requirements and how to upload data.

Route Service

You can use the route service to generate routes, driving directions, and calculated route representations (used to render a highlighted route on the map) based on locations or waypoints, set segment and route preferences, and generate map views of segments and directions. The route service methods are:

  • CalculateRoute—Returns a route based on route segments and specifications.

  • CalculateSimpleRoute—Returns a route based on specified latitude and longitude coordinates.

Note For information about how to access the MapPoint Web Service Customer Services site, see the information that you received when you enrolled in the service. For information about becoming a customer, visit the MapPoint Web Service Web site ( https://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/webservice).