Chapter 7
Using Bing Maps in Your SharePoint Business Solutions
What's in This Chapter?
- Understanding Bing Maps and geographical (geo) web services
- Using Bing Maps controls in applications
- Integrating the Bing Maps Silverlight control and geo web services in a SharePoint application
Increasingly, developers are building applications that introduce geographical (geo) data into the main user experience. With the help of geo data, this additional context (such as customer addresses within a map control or meteorological data superimposed on maps) provides improved decision-making and insight into application data. In this chapter, you'll explore how to integrate geo data into SharePoint using Bing Maps. Specifically, this chapter will provide you with an overview of Bing Maps, discuss how you can integrate the SharePoint client object model with the Bing Maps API, and then walk you through how to create a simple application that displays store information stored within a SharePoint list in a Bing Maps Silverlight control.
Overview of Bing Maps
Over the past few years, applications have become more integrated with different types of geo data. Geo data can help inform business decisions of all types. For example, integrating geo data into the context of applications such as reporting dashboards, sales management applications, or even customer management solutions has become important to help business professionals visualize which territories are doing well versus those that are doing ...