Getting Started with the Spatial Data Services

Note

Bing Maps for Enterprise service retirement

Bing Maps for Enterprise is deprecated and will be retired. Free (Basic) account customers can continue to use Bing Maps for Enterprise services until June 30th, 2025. Enterprise account customers can continue to use Bing Maps for Enterprise services until June 30th, 2028. To avoid service disruptions, all implementations using Bing Maps for Enterprise REST APIs and SDKs will need to be updated to use Azure Maps by the retirement date that applies to your Bing Maps for Enterprise account type.

Azure Maps is Microsoft's next-generation maps and geospatial services for developers. Azure Maps has many of the same features as Bing Maps for Enterprise, and more. To get started with Azure Maps, create a free Azure subscription and an Azure Maps account. For more information about azure Maps, see Azure Maps Documentation. For migration guidance, see Bing Maps Migration Overview.

Bing Spatial Data Services provides REST APIs that work with large sets of spatial data. With these APIs you can geocode spatial data and you can store data that has a spatial component in data sources that you can query.

See the links in the How to: sections below to find out more information.

Getting Started

To get started with the Bing Spatial Data Services, you must have a Bing Maps Key.

Note

Before using this API, review the Geocode and Data Source Limits

You can also use Bing Maps Dev Center to geocode entities and to create and manage your data sources. For more information, see Creating and Managing Data Sources. The Bing Spatial Data Services and the Bing Maps Dev Center can be used interchangeably to manage data sources for a single Bing Maps Account.

How to: Geocode and reverse-geocode spatial data

Use the Geocode Dataflow API to create dataflow jobs that geocode and reverse-geocode large sets of data. For more information, see Geocode Dataflow API. For an example of the complete process, see the Walkthrough

How to: Create a data source

Use the Load Data Source Dataflow to create a new data source.

How to: Query a data source

Use the Query API to query for entities in a data source.

How to: Update a data source

Use the Load Data Source Dataflow to update an existing data source.

How to: Download a data source

Use the Download a Data Source Dataflow API to download a data source.

How to: Delete a data source

Use the Delete a Data Source API to delete a data source.

How to: Stage a data source

Use the Load Data Source Dataflow to stage an existing data source. After testing your data source, you can Publish a Staged Data Source.

How to: Rollback a data source

Use the Rollback a Data Source Dataflow to rollback a data source to a previous version.

How to: Get information about data sources

Use the Get Data Source Information API to get information about a data source such as the entity type and properties that it stores. You can also request information about all of the data sources that belong to a Bing Maps Account.

How to: Use the Spatial Data Services with other Bing Maps APIs

Read the Show Spatial Data Search Results on a Map and Searching for Traffic Incidents Along a Route articles to learn how integrate Bing Spatial Data Services with Bing Maps Rest Services and the Bing Maps AJAX Control, Version 7.0.

Public Data Sources

The following are public data sources that you can access with any Bing Maps Key.

Data Source	Description
PointsOfInterest	The PointsOfInterest data source contains information about points of interest (POIs) for over 150 countries/regions worldwide.
Traffic Incident Data Source	TrafficIncident is a data source that contains traffic incidents data in the United States and Canada.
FourthCoffeeSample Data Source	FourthCoffeeSample is a data source with sample data.

Transaction Accounting

Transactions are counted for each Bing Spatial Data Services request sent with a valid Bing Maps Key. For information about billable and non-billable transactions for the Bing Spatial Data Services and how to view them, see Viewing Bing Maps Usage Reports.