Interactive Web Mapping

In this chapter, I'll show you how to use Google Maps and Virtual Earth as a dynamic user interface to query spatial data held in SQL Server 2008, by building a simple airport locator application. I'll show you how to construct the methods required by the each map API to respond to user input (such as clicking on the map), pass variables back to a stored procedure, retrieve the result set from the database and display them using AJAX without having to reload the webpage.
By using the techniques explained in this chapter, you can create exciting, dynamic spatial applications, with a sophisticated front-end interface, in only a few steps!

Here's a screenshot of what the resulting application looks like, using Google Maps as the front-end interface:

And here's the same application when viewed using Microsoft Virtual Earth:

This is a very powerful, yet flexible technique to display and query spatial data, and I'll give you examples of how you can adapt it for use in many different situations.