Affordable mapping or geocoding integration with winform application?

Question

Hi we're a Micro ISV and I've been looking off and on for months to find a way to integrate street mapping functionality into our windows forms application.

Our app is distributed online and I don't want to have to include map data so I thought integrating with an online solution would be best, however I've contacted Google, Microsoft, MapQuest etc and none of them have a solution that fits with a Micro ISV business model, i.e. ideally our end users would pay for using the service.

They all want us to pay up front for a fixed number of transactions per year and in all cases they have quoted us USD$6,000 and up payable in advance. We have to guess how many transactions our users would need in advance and would be charged quite steeply if they go over.

This is for basic street mapping: displaying maps, plotting points on maps and doing geocoding. I don't need it but they all offer routing and other features for even more $.

I've looked into OpenStreeMap and found an excellent article on using it in a .net winform application here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/GMapNET.aspx

And this would be almost ideal for us, I've tried it, the maps are excellent and the detail very good, however I'm stuck on Geocoding: our users would only have addresses, not lat/long coordinates and there is no free source for automated geocoding that I can find similar to OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap plans to implement it sometime in future and everyone else I could find charges quite a bit to use them through a web service.

If anyone does this now or has any ideas in general about mapping integration in windows desktop apps I'd be very grateful.

Answer 1

Hi,

There is a great list of free Geocoding and Reverse Geocoding services here. Integrating any of these should be very easy to do.

Also if you are interested I have a windows control library designed to work with the Google Earth Api. I realise this is not a flat mapping service as such but it is based around a web browser component so it should give you some ideas for integrating which ever services you choose.

Answer 2

You can sign up for a MapPoint developer account for free and use that service to get started.

Here's a tutorial: http://www.codestrider.com/blog/read/UsingMappointWebServices.aspx

Answer 3

The Google Maps API provides two methods for performing geocoding. If you wish to geocode from within your Google Maps API application you can do so using the GClientGeocoder object. Alternatively you can send geocoding requests directly to the HTTP geocoder.

More information on the HTTP Geocoder service can be found here: Google API geocoding