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Introducing MapPoint Location Server
VSLive! San Francisco, March 23, 2004 Location-based applications have been touted as the "killer application" for mobile commerce. Today, you can use realtime location data to improve fleet management efficiency, automate field services, create "reality" mobile games, and even track children for security purposes. However, despite the business promises, the growth of location-based services has been slower than predicted. A major factor that hinders developer adoption is the complex supporting infrastructure. Before you can write your core application to utilize location data, you must first understand how to address these issues:
Launching this week at Microsoft Mobile DevCon, Microsoft MapPoint Location Server (MLS) aims to make life easier for developers and address all these issues. MLS is installed and administrated completely within the user's corporate boundary and gives the user complete control of sensitive location data. Best of all, the MLS API is based on SOAP Web services, so it interoperates with many different client platforms. For example, you can write location-based applications in either .NET or Java.
MLS teams up with wireless carriers to utilize the same location information provided to 911 dispatchers. When you make a 911 emergency call from a cell phone, the wireless carrier is required to provide your location to the 911 operator so he or she can dispatch emergency response teams. The wireless carrier determines the phone's location by calculating the relative strengths of the phone radio signals at different cell towers. By 2007, the U.S. government's Enhanced 911 (E911) initiative mandates that all wireless carriers in the U.S. provide realtime coordinates for every phone in their network with an accuracy of 50 to 100 meters. To use MLS in commercial settings, developers first negotiate a location data service contract with carriers. The contract specifies a list of phone numbers that a particular MLS installation is authorized to locate. After the business deal, the application developer installs a carrier-specific plug-in into MLS that handles the proprietary protocol to retrieve location data from the carrier's network. MLS is architected to support multiple plug-ins from different carriers at the same time. That drastically reduces the developer's work because it makes multiple carriers transparent to MLS developers. MLS supports plug-ins for Sprint in the U.S. and for Bell Mobility in Canada. MLS gives the user complete control over who can see what through an administration interface. For example, you can permit your boss to query your location during business hours but not after work. You can also ask MLS to send you an SMS message when someone tries to query your location. MLS comes bundled with a Mobile Locator program that serves as an administration client (see Figure 1). Mobile Locator runs on both PCs and Pocket PCs. Using the MLS Web services API, you can develop any administration client that conforms to your corporate policies. Coordinate information by itself is of little use. You must utilize Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to translate the coordinate to a street address, correlate it with points of interest, and render maps. Microsoft provides the MapPoint Web Service (MWS), a hosted GIS solution. MLS is tightly integrated with MWS and supports a superset of MWS APIs. Application developers need to interact only with MLS to access location data and related GIS data in one step. For example, if a user wants to find nearby coffee shops, he or she can send a request to MLS from his or her Smartphone; MLS requests the wireless carrier to locate him or her, uses the location to find nearby coffee shops, and returns the highlighted map to the Smartphone (see Figure 2). Microsoft is distributing free MLS SDK CDs for Mobile DevCon attendees. The MLS SDK is also freely available for download on the MSDN Web site. The SDK comes with a special "carrier plug-in" that utilizes emulated data sources to allow offline development and testing. For commercial use, you must subscribe to MapPoint Web Service and pay Microsoft a small per-device license fee. Location data access with carriers must be negotiated separately. Visit the Microsoft MapPoint home page to learn more about MLS and sign up for a free trial: http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/default.mspx. About the Author |
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