I want to add a map control to my website (ASP.Net 4.0, Visual Studio 2010) and have come across a few:
Bing Maps, Google Maps, OpenStreetMaps
The problems I am coming across is lack of good documentation for them.
I don't need anything too complicated (no routing or anything like that), I simply need to be able to add pins in locations.
I have used Bing Maps for Silverlight and it was great, it had a nice .Net control with lot's of documentation available, this is the sort of thing I am after for my ASP.Net site.
Has anyone any experience with ASP and Maps, and any code examples?
It does depend on what exactly your site is for, an dhow visible it is, etc.
For simple things like a "find our office" type of map to go on a public website, it's pretty easy, and generally free. For use on non-publically accessible sites, most vendors will charge (obviously OpenStreetMap won't).
For Bing Maps, there is even a handy little ASP.Net control over on Codeplex, although I can't vouch for how good it is.
Related
I have a company that needs a document management system.
I have looked at SharePoint but it has far to many bells and whistles. The company wants something that doesn't have intranet portals, app downloads and all the other waffle (they simple don't have the skill nor the inclination to spend thousands learning it).
I am finding that SharePoint is a little like a fork-lift bus truck car. It trying to be everything to everybody which usually ends up useless to all.
My question is does SharePoint Foundation work out of the box as a document management system or is it like an engine you put your own code upon.
The more I read through Google the more conflicting information I come across without any clear definitions.
What I want to end up with is a document management system that has authentication and a simple page / screen / whatever to link / admin to those documents.
As per usual Ill probably end up having to write my own but it would be nice to not keep re-inventing the wheel.
SharePoint definitely has a learning curve, there's no getting away from that. However you don't need to set up all the "bells and whistles" if you just want a basic DMS.
To answer your question, you don't need your own code to get a SharePoint site up and running. You will however need to spend quite a lot of time figuring out what configuration you need for your needs.
We're using SharePoint 2010 Foundation as a simple document repository in a couple of web apps and it works fine. No Wikis, no versioning, no custom pages. That stuff is availablem but we don't need it so we don't enable it. The nice thing about it is the security which hooks into AD so authentication can be set up easily and it is robust. Our DMS solutions are accessed via the internet by users, and internally by apps, and SharePoint can handle that fine by setting up alternate access mapping so that you can get to documents via internal and external URLs.
I won't lie; I've spend a lot of long days cursing SharePoint, but it's still a far better solution than what I could have come up with myself.
In case your wondering, we're using 2010 rather than 2013 because we had been using WSS 3.0 up until this year and you can't upgrade directly from WSS to 2013. But since we only need the basics, doing a second upgrade to 2013 wasn't worth the effort.
The truth is Sharepoint can be used as a sort of document management system (ish). But in truth it is far to over complicated and has gone rather off at a tangent from the demos I was original given when it first came about in the beginning. Alfresco an Nuxio are probably much better. (but even they have their issues). You simple have to look at all three and make your own decisions as now I know this is not a simple question. I personally went for Alfresco but for very exact reasons, even it has some issues but generally speaking it is the best(ish) out of the three. (Nuxio would of been best except for its 'purchase your admin interface' model.
I'm familiar with C# and typically create asp.net webforms apps. I've spent a couple of days now trawling the net for the 'simplest but workable' way to setup webservices for ajax. My mind is now full of options - scriptservices, asmx, httphandlers, page methods, wcf, and so forth. My requirements are pretty simple really:
I'd like to get various datasets (normally LINQ generated
collections in C#, in my asp.net webforms apps) over to javascript to use charting/viz tools like highcharts (www.highcharts.com)
Call server side methods from javascript, with parameters (eg to apply a new criteria, add a record to the backend db).
Minimum things to setup/debug - the less web.config, .cs files linked to .svc files, and other dependencies,
the happier I'll be.
As I seem to find in my chosen Microsoft ecosystem, there seem to be many ways to do it. I've downloaded a couple of examples that work, but replicating the steps to create them is not obvious.
Any wisdom from people who have tried the methods and had success? It's driving me crazy! I just want a basic chart! Postbacks are starting to sound tolerable :)
Any kind of proven 'working' walkthrough or linked example would be great.
Cheers
Mark
I'm quite fond of using JavascriptSerializer and JQuery.
This is a good tutorial although it is MVC focussed:
http://www.highoncoding.com/Articles/770_Implementing_Dynamic_DropDownList_in_ASP_NET_MVC_3_Framework.aspx
I want to use one of this services for maps in my website. Which do you think I should go for provided that the application is writen in C#. Which is the best SDK for working with this services in C#.
use great maps api instead it is an open source project and very useful. You can change the maps from bing,yahoo to google maps.Of course you should take the api key for google and bing. The documentation is not enough but i think it is very easy to use. Hope this helps.
This is somewhat subjective; however, go for what you believe would provide the best service to your "customers" (whoever they may be). I would not let your determination be based on what "SDK is best" per se, as you can find a hundred examples out there to do both bing maps and google maps. As far as popularity, I would imagine google maps takes the cake:
Try this google maps example: here
I suggest taking a look at this:
http://www.jonasson.org/maps/
I had to make the same decision a couple of years ago, and when using this it was clear that Google Maps had much better satellite imagery, and road data than Bing Maps (specifically in the locations our customers would be using it)
The Bing Maps API is coded in a very familiar .Net fashion. Although its all JavaScript, the Google API feels more like a Java implementation (as you might expect). This take some time to get your head around, but shouldn't really be an issue.
I found the Maps Group on Google excellent as a resource for research and queries.
UPDATE:
Google released v 3 of their API recently and its supports street view as part of the maps API. Pretty compelling reason to use it.
For my needs (and yours may well be very different) the parts of the API I use are easiest to access via Javascript in both cases. The big win for me in the app I'm working on right now is the Silverlight control for Bing maps, and the ease of integration into a WP7 app.
I am looking for a search engine that can be used for sites. Sometimes we dont want to use google embedded search or the complication of lucene.
I run in to these requests:
Crawl based search
Rating and ranking of content based on content types
Searching documents like pdf and docs etc..
I dont mind if it is a commercial control that we have to purchase but I would like to be able to integrate it nicely in to some of these use cases
There used to be Lucene.net. Recently the status of this project is becoming questionable (not certain of the details). Here is the site: https://lucenenet.apache.org/
Looks like you can still download the code. Probably not much development going forward.
Bob
I have used dtSearch in the past which I know has a web crawler built into it. It doesn't come with a front end control though, it's strictly a search engine. You need to write your own results control. It does have a powerful query language though that lets you score on multiple dimensions depending on how you set up your indexes. It also has a decent .NET API to work with.
I don't know that this is any less complicated than Lucene though. So then I start to wonder what complications you are hoping to avoid.
You should look at Apache Solr (built using Lucene) - it offers a RESTful interface for integrating into .NET or whatever platform you prefer. It offers all the goodies could ask for without concern for compatibility Java .NET versions etc.
You can easily integrate Solr into your .NET app using SolrNet
I am looking people's opinion and experience on using chart controls within an ASP.NET application (web forms or MVC) primarily but also in any kind of project.
I am currently doing my research and I have a pretty big list of controls to evaluate. My list includes (in no particular order):
ASP.NET controls:
DevExpress XtraCharts (http://demos.devexpress.com/XtraChartsDemos/)
Dundas Chart for .NET (http://www.dundas.com/)
Telerik RadChart for ASP.NET AJAX (http://www.telerik.com/)
ComponentArt Charting & Visualization
for ASP.NET (http://www.componentart.com/)
Infragistics WebChart (http://www.infragistics.com/dotnet/netadvantage/aspnet.aspx#Overview)
.net Charting (http://www.dotnetcharting.com/)
Chart Control for .Net Framework
(Microsoft's) (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/11/24/new-asp-net-charting-control-lt-asp-chart-runat-quot-server-quot-gt.aspx)
Flash controls:
FusionCharts v3 (http://www.fusioncharts.com/)
XML/SWF Charts (http://www.maani.us/xml_charts/index.php)
amCharts (http://www.amcharts.com/)
AnyChart (http://www.anychart.com/home/)
Javascript:
Flot (http://code.google.com/p/flot/)
Flotr (http://solutoire.com/flotr/)
jqPlot (http://www.jqplot.com/index.php)
(If I missed some that worth to be compared against the above please let me know.)
What I am looking is opinions on using any of the above so I can form my own and help others do the same, based on what I read here.
I do not care which one is better. What I care for is why someone likes one of the above and what do these controls offer as a distinct advantage. I am interested in developer's opinion and I would like to find out which things are difficult doing with any of the above controls and which things are easy to achieve.
AJAX compatibility (build in to the controls but also manual), ASP.NET compatibility, input capabilities, data binding options, performance, how much code does one need to write in order to create a chart, are some of the things that I would want to read about.
I have already done my research on StackOverflow for relevant questions but there is nothing on the level of detail that I would want to read in order to make a responsible decision.
I worked a little bit with Google charts and the .Net Chart Control (formerly Dundas Chart 5.5). I do not have an opinion about the other products you listed.
At the time (a year ago) there was no functioning .Net wrapper framework for Google Charts (at least I did not find one), and while the Google Charts Api is relatively simple, it is also very limited. I found the resulting code that composes the chart request to be inherently ugly and not very maintainable (not necessarily the fault of the API, I know - but it would have required a much larger investment to do it better). Here are some of the resulting charts. For instance, I was unable to find a way to align the grid with the tick marks. The 30mph line on the third chart seems to be randomly placed. If you need fine-grained control, Google Charts is not your choice.
The .Net Chart Control on the other hand gives you a lot of control. I worked on a prototype earlier this year and the goal was to create charts that matched the ones from a print publication put together by a design firm. At first I thought it would require compromises, but the Chart Control turned out to be capable of the job. Here is the result (click the 2nd tab). I found the ability to use a range chart in this way, and have control over the placement of the labels for the vertical lines at special values pretty unique for a free tool. Also, Alex Gorev who runs the MSDN forum turned out to be very helpful when I ran into an issue (even though he could not ultimately solve it).
Not a control, but another option for producing charts and publish them to the web, is SSRS. I have used the web service interface to publish a report that contains a chart. This could be a better option for very large sets.
2014 update: The comments above are for a previous (obsolete) generation of Google's chart API. The new API probably addresses many of the limitations, so you should check it out.
SimpleChart is a straight forward and easy to use component. I've used Fusion Charts and would also recommend it for simplicity and well presented graphs.
I went with the Microsoft Chart control, mentioned as the marked-answer, over here: Charts for ASP.NET
so far the best charts I have used is FusionCharts. it can be used with any programming language, as it provides a good documentation. the free version is good enough.
I have done a lot of .Net projects that required graphing and would recommend a solution outside of .Net. The reason why I go outside of .Net is because I expose my datasets by JSON (usually) and like to move the processing to the client. Altogether this saves me burgeoning my servers with graphically intensive tasks.
I have mainly used Javascript API's and I would recommend Protovis because the charts are beautiful (but not always compatible with IE) and can be manipulated in realtime on the client with new AJAX fed datasets.
Another of note is Google Chart and Visualisations.
Echoing everyone else - it all depends what you need to do with it.
We looked at a number of chart controls for a recent project and it's amazing how many of them have really basic limitations. As an example, we needed to specifically set the size and position of the plot area - you'd think that would be easy but the dundas and the microsoft charting api can't do it. We also had a lot of problems getting charts to format datetime scales sensibly.
In the end we went for dotnetCharting. The website makes it look pretty rubbish, but we've found it to be extremely good, if a little quirky in places. I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone. It's got some reasonably slick AJAXy stuff, but to be honest you can (and we did) custom write most of that stuff yourself anyway. There are more important things to consider when choosing the tool imho.
Make a list of specific things you think you'll need and then find a control that does them. Don't make any assumptions, as a lot of the tools have pretty elementary problems (as above).
I did not use a lot of charting tools, but make sure it will work with MVC if you are planning to use this framework. I have some issues with the DevExpress Grid and MVC.
I haven't used a cross-section of these controls, but of the ones I have used, I prefer the Infragistics WebChart.
In my opinion, the designer is easy to use and there is a ton of flexability.
My second choice would be the Google Chart API.
I've used the DevExpress XtraChart in ASP.NET, and it was great. I've used Google Chart API successfully in a rails project, but as it is hosted, generating the points and labels would be easy on any platform.
I am using ChartDirector in my projects. The thing that I like the most about this component is very complex examples. I have been able to implement their financial chart example with almost no alterations saving enormous amount of time in the process.
i has used microsoft charts control in one of my project. it provided me things that i needed.
Tutorial on Charts Control:
http://parasdoshi1989.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/how-to-include-charts-in-visual-studio-2008-express-edition-using-microsoft-chart-control/