It seems that having mapping capabilities as part of solution offerings these days is getting more and more prevelent and commonplace.  So what options do we have to use Maps in our solutions?

Basically we have Free, Sort of Free, and Commercial.

Lets look at the Sort of Free ones first.  In this category our main contenders are:

• Google Maps
• Microsoft's Bing Maps

So what does "Sort of Free" mean?  It means as long as you provide access to the maps that are being used to the public, and not behind a members only, intranet then you can use the map providers maps free of charge (within certain fair use guidelines).

Is this a good thing?  Well yes, its a great thing.  These map providers give you an API so you can integrate directly with the mapping service easily, and alot of people who need mapping capabilities don't mind if the general public can see them, actually they want the general public to see them.  Examples?

• Real Estate (www.domain.com.au / Realestate.com.au)

What's the catch?  In the above example nothing, but if you want to create an application that uses maps that will only be used within the confines of an organisations intranet, or for paid subscrition SaaS products, then you will run into trouble.

What options do you have?  Well this is where it gets interesting.  OpenStreetMap provide free map data for people to use in any way they like be it within an intranet, or SaaS product offering.  This is great if, the application users have access to the internet, but what if they don't?

Surprisingly in this day and age, there are certain instances where a computer will not have access to the internet, and therby not have access to external map tile services as mentioned above.  For this senario, there is only really one way to go, create your own map tile server and server out your own tiles for your applications.

What options do you have?  There are quite a few free spatial stack offereings available which require/depend on a varying number of technologies.  For example some of these are:

• Mapnik
• FreeGeoServer
• GeoServer
• OpenLayers

Realworld Examples

xiion has delivered spatial solutions based on the OpenLayers/GeoServer/PostGreSQL/PostGIS solution stack with great success.

More to come...