Common Concepts

GeoBase can render map data on the screen. Points on a map are described by LatLon objects, which represent a latitude/longitude coordinate. LatLon objects are capable of precisely representing any point on Earth.

Maps are usually drawn using a Windows Forms object named MapCtrl. MapCtrl has built-in panning and zooming functionality.

For more information see the Maps Concept topic.

You can use renderers to draw additional features on a map. To draw your own content on the map, you should implement the IMapRenderer interface and then add your renderer to the Renderer property of a Map or MapCtrl. In addition, by implementing the IMapMouseHandler interface, the objects you render on the map can respond to user mouse clicks.

You can combine multiple renderers using RendererList objects.

For more information see the Rendering Concept topic.

Geocoding is the process of translating map coordinates to an address, or vice versa.

Forward geocoding is the process of translating an address to map coordinates - we perform this process when finding an address on a street map. Reverse geocoding translates map coordinates to an address (the opposite of forward geocoding).

For more information see the Geocoding Concept topic.

A Route object has a minimum of two stops: a start and an end stop. You can optionally add any number of stops between the start and the end. GeoBase can change the order in which the stops are visited and the route between them. This is usually done to minimize time or distance, although you can specify custom criteria (for example, you might want to reduce the amount of time spent on highways or interstates).

For more information see the Routing Concept topic.

A geofence is a closed polygon that may be used to define areas of containment or exclusion on a map. Geofences could be used by a pizza company to ensure that its vehicles do not travel beyond their designated delivery areas.

For more information see the Geofences Concept topic.

A data query allows users to identify spatial features that lie within a given (rectangular) area. As an example, a data query could be used to locate all the restaurants within a given area.

For more information see the Direct Data Queries Concept topic.

Alchemy (the custom-data import tool) manipulates shapefiles into GeoBase maps. This section briefly describes the shapefile format.

For more information see the Shapefiles Concept topic.

Telogis GeoBase uses GBFS files to support operations such as mapping, routing, and navigation. These files are identified by the .gbfs extension. Your GeoBase applications can automatically load data files, or you can explicitly load data files from a specified location.

For more information see the Data Files Concept topic.

Clusters are images you can render on a map that represent multiple map features. By using clusters, you can represent quantities of data that would otherwise leave the map too cluttered to be useful.

For more information see the Clustering Concept topic.