Bing Maps FAQ
What is Bing Maps for Enterprise?
- Bing Maps for Enterprise encompasses the next evolution of the Bing Maps Platform offering with innovative new capabilities. The Bing Maps platform is not only a new brand name; it represents a richer, more powerful offering from Microsoft to companies in all industries.
Where does Bing Maps have rooftop geocoding?
- Bing Maps currently has rooftop geocoding in the United States and Japan.
What percentage rooftop geocoding does Bing Maps have?
- Bing Maps has 40% rooftop geocoding in the United States and 90% in Japan.
Is Bing Maps 6.2 backwards compatible?
- Bing Maps version 6.2 is backwards compatible only for version 6.1.
How many route waypoints does Bing Maps support?
- The recommended maximum number is 25. Regardless of the number of route objects, however, the time it takes to calculate the route is proportional to the total distance of the entire multipoint route.
Does Bing Maps support optimized routing?
- No, in version 6.2, Bing Maps creates routes in the order in which the points are created.
What browsers does Bing Maps 6.2 support?
- Bing Maps supports Firefox 2 and 3, Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, and Safari versions 2 and 3 on Mac.
What coverage does Bing Maps have for traffic overlay information?
- Coverage includes traffic overlays for more than 70 major metropolitan areas in the United States, plus one in Canada, and provides incident and construction traffic data as well.
Does Bing Maps allow for importing of external data?
- Yes, Bing Maps can import data in both GeoRSS and KML formats.
What kinds of information will commercial customers get in reports?
- Reports will include transaction counts per day broken down by APIs for a given date range by day and by API.
How do commercial customers access transaction reports?
- Reports can be accessed through the CSS website.
What is the difference between the Bing Maps Platform and the bing.com/maps site?
- The Bing Maps Platform is an integrated set of services that helps organizations visualize data and provide immersive end-user experiences. The site www.bing.com/maps is a consumer-facing online search and mapping tool that is underpinned by the Bing Maps Platform. It gives people the ability to learn about, discover, and explore a specific location.
What is the difference between Bing Maps Web Services and MapPoint Web Service?
- The Bing Maps Web Services offers many of the features and functionality of MapPoint Web Service,
with the rich imagery of Bing Maps.
In addition, Bing Maps Web Services features include one-box search functionality, mobile device optimized imagery, geocoding, and routing.
For more information about the Bing Maps Web Services, visit the SDK. For more information about MapPoint Web Service, visit the MapPoint Web Service SDK.
What is the difference between the Bing Maps Platform and Microsoft Virtual Earth?
- The Bing Maps Platform is simply the new name for Microsoft Virtual Earth. There is no change in the enduring values of the Microsoft mapping platform: useful functionality; global coverage; performance; and enterprise-class reliability, availability, and scalability.
What type of applications benefit from Bing Maps?
- The Bing Maps Platform enables a broad range of consumer, enterprise, and government applications, including Web site store locators, information portals, travel portals, call center applications, and fleet and asset tracking.
What is bird's eye imagery?
- This feature provides an aerial map view at 45 degrees. Currently, this feature covers major metropolitan areas in the United States, Canada, the U.K., Western Europe, and Australia. As with the road and aerial map styles, you can use the standard navigation methods to pan and zoom the bird's eye imagery.
What is street level imagery and what areas include street level imagery?
- Street level imagery enables map users to experience Bing Maps from street level. Street level imagery will supplement maps, directions, and local search. Imagery is collected using a 360 degree camera typically mounted on a car or SUV. We only drive public roads and other areas open to the public (e.g., parking lots), with our main focus on streets with businesses and points of public interest. At times, due to a connecting road or traffic, we may drive residential areas as well. Street level images will be made available as part of Microsoft’s online mapping service at www.bing.com/maps in the future.
How frequently are data and imagery updated?
- Microsoft is continually updating Bing Maps with new imagery provided by partners, including aerial, bird's eye1, and global satellite imagery. Several terabytes of data and imagery are added and updated each month, with regions of higher population density generally seeing the most new data.
How do I purchase Bing Maps for Enterprise?
- Customers purchase the Bing Maps Platform as an annual subscription direct from Tetrad. There are two
primary licensing models:
• Per user is for "known user" applications, such as within a call center or fleet tracking applications.
• Per transactions is for "anonymous user" applications, such as a Web site locator or travel portal. Pricing is dependent on the numbers of users and/or transactions you purchase.
What level of integration exists between Visual Studio and Bing Maps?
- Bing Maps AJAX Control: Not currently supported by the Visual Studio designer, but the Visual Studio JavaScript
IntelliSense helper can simplify development.
Silverlight Map Control: Developers can build and deploy road, aerial, and hybrid map views, with Silverlight in the .NET framework using Visual Studio 2008.
MapPoint Web Service (MWS): MWS integrates with the Visual Studio help system. Visual Studio automatically generates the methods and classes once developers have registered the Web Services Description Language with their Visual Studio solution.
Can the Bing Maps Platform be used with other development tools, such as Eclipse or Ruby, and other platforms, such as Solaris, Java, Perl, and Linux?
- Yes, Bing Maps can be programmatically accessed by virtually any development environment that conforms to the required standards.
The MapPoint Web Service API is a standard SOAP XML-based Web service exposed through WSDL. Provided
that your development platform supports SOAP Web service standards, it can be used with MapPoint Web Service.
Because the Bing Maps Control is a client-side component run in the Web browser, there is no dependency on the development environment. The control can be developed in any environment that can output standard HTML and JavaScript code for the client, even in environments that can deliver only static pages.
The SOAP-based Bing Maps Web Services is fully supported and documented via the SDK. Designed for mobile and desktop clients, the functionality is not JavaScript-based, and the maps are static.
What measures will Microsoft take to ensure street level imagery doesn’t violate the privacy of individuals?
- As with all Microsoft technology, street level imagery and Bing maps were designed with security and privacy concerns in mind. Mapping products comply with applicable laws governing the acquisition and publishing of imagery. Specifically, Microsoft uses automated software and advanced algorithms to detect and blur faces and license plates to protect individual privacy. This automated software and advanced algorithms are based on years of Microsoft Research investments in computer vision techniques. Microsoft also accepts requests to blur or remove images of faces or persons, homes, cars, acts of violence, nudity and unlawful material. Microsoft reviews every request. Depending on the content of the imagery, Microsoft may remove it entirely, blur a portion of it, or take no action.
TETRAD is a Microsoft Solution Provider
TETRAD Computer Applications has extensive experience developing GIS mapping solutions using Microsoft Bing Maps for Enterprise and MapPoint 2010. With the Bing Maps Platform, TETRAD can embed location and mapping features in your web applications.
For more information on Bing Maps, please call us at 1-800-663-1334 or request more information.
