WCF Service as Tile Source

[Gunnar]

Hello all,
I want to use a WCF Service as Tile Source.
As far as I have seen I can only use the GetTile() method to influence the tile request.
This way I can only change URIs.
Is or will there be any way to have an overidable method which returns image data so that I can fetch the images from my WCF Service?

This is a major point in our decision whether to buy the Telerik components.

[Andrey]

Hello Gunnar,

You do not need to return the image data. All you need to do is to return full URL of the WCF service request which will return the tile image in response. Just don’t use proxy classes are generated by Visual Studio, but direct URLs to the WCF methods.  As another approach I can recommend obtaining image data from the WCF using proxy classes, saving image to the file in the file system, and then return URI of the file in the file system from the GetTile method.

All the best,
Andrey Murzov
the Telerik team

[Gunnar]

Thanks for the fast answer.
I may have found a solution via a REST-based Binding within WCF.
This will work for the geographic "background map".

But I will have one case where I want to paint "overlay information" that represents business data (e.g. customer locations) locally without any tile service or available tiles in filesystem.
For this the URI/URL approach won't work well, I guess.

An additional question: The documentation on the RadMap control is kind of sparse right now. Is this going to improve?

[Andrey]

Hello Gunnar,

The map providers are not responsible for the visualization of business information i.e. you do not need to use map providers to paint "overlay information" that represents business data. RadMap contains InformationLayer and DynamicLayer classes which are designed to show geographically positioned data over the map image (or without map image at all – when tile layer use EmptyProvider). You can read your business data from anywhere (WCF service, for example) in any form and then use these classes to represent business data as framework elements located over the map. For better understanding  I would recommend you to take a look into the RadMap demos (especially the “Data Bindings” and “Items Virtualization”examples).

As for the documentation -- we will forward your feedback to our technical writers so they can consider it for the future versions of the control.


Regards,
Andrey Murzov
the Telerik team

[Gunnar]

One concern I have about the solution of displaying the Businessdata as WPF Framework Elements is that more expensive drawing is done on the client that is using the RadMap. But one of our usage scenarios is supposed to be (almost) a "Thin Client" that is not requiring powerful GPUs or CPUs. Painting the Businessdata visualization on the client (by using WPF Framework Elements) would not comply with this I assume, would it?

The following licensing question occured to me: If we buy the complete Telerik suite (the one that includes WPF, Silverlight, ...) where the source code is also provided, will we be allowed to make some changes to it to be able to adapt it to our needs and ship it in our product in compiled form?

That are a lot of questions from me but currently we are in the evaluating and planning phase. ;)

[Andrey]

Hello Gunnar,

It seems to me that using of the thin client isn’t a problem  if you will use lightweight framework elements to represent business information (I mean framework elements without hard bitmap effects, shadows and so on). You just need to minimize the number of points presented on the map at the same time to some reasonable number. You can use DynamicLayer to load only those elements which must be presented for a given moment.

If you have access to the "Thin clients" you can try to run some of the samples which use RadMap and see whether everything works fine.

Regarding your licensing question: The Software’s source code is provided to You and Your Licensed Developers for the sole purposes of education and enabling You to understand, at a source code level, why the Software operates as it does.  You may not use the Software’s source code as a basis of development of derivative works of the Software or other software products (other than as a basis for creating object code versions of the Software for inclusion as a component in Integrated Products). Furthermore Telerik DOES NOT provide technical support for any source code that has been modified by any party other than Telerik. For more details you can check here.


All the best,
Andrey Murzov
the Telerik team