Offline Maps Software including API

V

VG008

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 9, 2010
Messages
803
Reaction score
41
Location
Johannesburg
Hi Guys,

I'm looking for an offline mapping software that allows me to interface with it (via an API/SDK).
Basically, I need to feed the software a location (Johannesburg) and I require the GPS coordinates of this location.

This can be free or paid software. However, it must be offline.

Please advise, if you know of such software.

Thanks :)
 
There are free ESRI shape file websites. That will give you geometric shapes and colours linked to gps co-ordinates. With that you can import data to a platform somewhere. I did some code a while ago, prior to leveraging the google maps api, where I used a shapes file for my visualisation and plotted the points I wanted accross it using SSRS 2008 R2. This would generate reports offline from the net.

Probably not what you wanted but thought I would mention it. The important thing is the shapes file for offline, which allows you to define the boundaries of where you are going to plot.
 
What you are trying to perform is what is called "Geocoding". Input an address/name/poi/etc and get the resulting longitude,latitude.

Have a look at http://www.openstreetmap.org/ for free data.
There should be quite a few free/open source mapping engines that you could use I guess (I don't know..I built my own GIS engine ;))

Otherwise you could try to build your own geocoder, its not that hard (except if you want uber performance).
EDIT: Also look at spatial sqlite; it's free!
sqlite also supports Free Text Searching that will help you wrt performance.
 
Last edited:
Thanks guys for the input.

Yes, I'm trying to perform Geocoding. We used Google maps before, however because of the volume, Google maps is becoming slow.
For now, I'm going to base the location on the postal codes (http://download.geonames.org/export/zip/ ). I will investigate alternatives ...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X