SQL Azure Lessons Learned: ESRI

SQL-Azure_rgbIn this episode of Lessons Learned I chat with Rex Hansen of ESRI.  Rex works on MapIt; a product for visualizing enterprise data on maps.  This was recently released as a on-premises product that enables developers to work with the tabular and spatial data in SQL Server 2008 and integrate that data with maps on ArcGIS online and Bing Maps. 

ESRI has been working to extend that functionality to Windows Azure and SQL Azure.  MapIt takes advantage of SQL Azure to consume location-based data.  The MapIt spatial data service can be deployed as a role on Windows Azure and provides spatial data capabilities to applications using SQL Azure.  This provides a valuable service to folks that miss the spatial data types they were used to using in SQL Server.

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Channel 9: SQL Azure Lessons Learned: ESRI 

 

Rex walked me through building a Silverlight application with their Silverlight Control Toolkit in Expression Blend.  As Rex mentions in the video ESRI has released the source code for their Silverlight toolkit controls.  You can find those on CodePlex here: https://ESRISilverlight.codeplex.com/

It sounds like ESRI has some big plans for where they want to take the MapIt product to provide even better integration with SQL Azure.

You can find out more about the ESRI MapIt product here.

 

Technorati Tags: Windows Azure,SQL Azure,Maps,Bing Maps,Spatial,Azure Lessons Learned

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2010
    This is great to see continued innovation in the mapping space as it relates to WPF and Silverlight.  At IdentityMine we had struggles a couple years ago working with map tiles, etc so it's good to see new solutions are being offered.  Thanks for the vid.
  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2010
    Thanks Kurt.  I'm glad you liked it.
  • Anonymous
    January 26, 2010
    It is not only at IdentityMine where people struggled with maptiles but it can often be encountered at government offices also.Our Data Mapping team still continues its usual daily battle in order to visualize several datasets from various internal servers. It is only hoped to see this sort of development to be deployed within a few years for their use. It is however very promising to see that major developer organizations already working on a solution like this. Thank you for that!