Pitney Bowes MapXtreme - Manual (Page 60)

Chapter 3: Mapping Concepts
Mapping and MapXtreme
MapXtreme v7.1 60 Developer Guide
Mapping and MapXtreme
The central element to a mapping application is the map. This chapter presents a short overview of
the most important mapping terms that you will likely encounter while building your application with
MapXtreme. The introductions also point you to the appropriate namespace in the MapXtreme
object model so that you can quickly get the technical information you need. The topics include:
Š Maps
Š Tables
Š Layers
Š Features
Š Labels and Legends
Š Themes
Š Tools
Š Workspaces
Š Coordinate Systems and Projections
Maps
A map displays the spatial relationship among map features, such as town boundaries, customer
locations, or power lines. The map visually orients you to where those features are and what they
represent. In addition to features, elements on the map can include labels, titles, legends, and
themes. Themes are created based on some action taken involving the features and information on
the map.
The map is contained in a MapControl. The MapControl also provides basic tools for viewing the
map (pan, zoom in, zoom out, center).
You create a map in a variety of ways:
• Use the MapXtreme Workspace Manager to build and save a map workspace. (See Features of
the Workspace Manager ).
• Use a MapXtreme template that provides a MapControl that you are drag and drop onto a Visual
Studio form (See
Chapter 7: Desktop Applications, Controls, Dialogs, and Tools for desktop
applications and Chapter 5: Web Applications, Controls, and Tools for web applications.
• Use the MapXtreme Object Model to programmatically build mapping into your application (See
MapFactory and the MapInfo.Mapping namespace in the Developer Reference (online help).
Tables
Tables contain the data you wish to display on the map. Tables hold rows and columns of information
that describe the features, including their geometry, style, and attributes. MapXtreme supports tables
from a wide variety of sources including, native tables (MapInfo .TAB), relational database
management systems (RDBMS), dBase, MS Access, ASCII files, and ESRI ShapeFiles. Speciality
tables include raster, grid, seamless, views, WMS, and ADO.NET. The type of table is available
through the TableInfo class. Tables are opened and closed via the Catalog in the MapInfo.Data
namespace. See
Chapter 8: Working with Data .