Requirements for building mMap applications ?

[SoulBlade]

Hi all,

From a developers viewpoint, I wanted to ask what sort of components are required, with regards application-architecture/design, to building full mobile map applications, (with interactive/pannable maps, geocoding services, routing/navigational services, etc) such as is seen with applications like Nokia Maps and Google Maps.
thanks for all replies in advance.

[symbianyucca]

Those ones would take rather long time to do. First of course you would need to have a web services that could deliver you the data, i.e. Maps data and services data for routing,geo/revgeo coding etc.

And then you would need to build UI's that can handle the data in client side. Anyway, rather pointless to do, since you propably don't own world map, thus if you want to make an Maps application you propably would be better off using teh Maps APIs, such the the Ovi Maps APIs include in Qt Mobility 1.1.0.

[SoulBlade]

It's a (design for a) map-application for offering LBS within my university environment. (so it's not a whole-world coverage). I've already acquired the maps data on the university and have it stored in a geospatial database; the maps are being rendered by an application-server as tiled images.

My issue is with the intricacies involved in building a clientside application to do the presentation as well as handle other services like geocoding, and routing. That's why i was asking if someone on the Forum had worked on a similar application-type. I'd already asked this question on the Flash Lite section (cause i'm using Flash Lite as the development platform, as well as an opensource mapping library); but got no answers. I also posted the same question on the Adobe mobile forums, and still got no replies.

I intended on storing some of the map data on the device - as was a suggested method in the "Developing S60 LBS Applications" document. (Though, come to think of it; that document's really kinda old. Shouldn't somebody update it ?!). But i'm not so sure of the best way(s)/representations to store the mapdata within the mobile device.

I took a look at the 'cities' folder, present in the memory card of most S60 3rd FP2 and 5th Edition devices (when just purchased) ; used to store map data. Despite the folder size being quite huge (like 417MB , which is kinda creepy to bundle with a map application to endusers if it's all just containing mapdata), i noticed that the map data files use a .cdt format. No idea what it's used for though.

I've googled abit for possible J2ME implementations of this kind of application (even if they're just noted in research_abstracts) but really didn't getting anything that was concrete as regards; application-inner-workings or implementation patterns.

I don't believe it's pointless. Just that i think there're alot of 'moving-parts' to build such a full-app. That's why i posted the question in the first place.