phreephly

Recipes 

BraeHaus,

take a look at Microsoft's Map Point technology. There is an API that you can use to do just what your looking for. Ideally you'd use C# as the programming language, but I think any .NET product will work. The Streets and Maps link given by atarlecky is based on the Map Point SDK.

__________________
phreephly -

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.
-Dave Barry

Homercidal

Recipes 

Wow, you're asking for help with a school programming project at a brewing website??

I thought you were just interested in doing this for fun. If you are actually going to program, then there are a few choices, but M$ lets you interact with several of their softwares if you know one of the C++ laguages or .NET of whatever. It's beyond me, but I'm sure you could manage to get one of their newer mapping softwares integrated with Access.

Are you sure you wouldn't be better served in one of the M$ forums?? People are always asking for that kind of help there. They usually get samples of code to work from too.

brauhaus

Recipes 

haha, no this isn't for a school project, and yes this is purely for fun.

i've been out of school for quite some time.

I can see this is way over my tinkering and I'm probably going to not pursue this venture any further.

Basically, our fire department has software already that we use to sum up our situation before we arrive on-scene, we use On-Scene Xplorer for this, see below:

The on-scene software allows us to store information for the buildings in our first-due area (drawings, what type of suppression system the building has, manager name and phone numbers, etc, etc.). It's a pretty interesting program and is like a fancy version of google maps, or any mapping program just taken a step further.

This software is extremely pricey and I was curious how hard it would be to create a similar program to test on our squad, something perhaps in-house that we could tweak on our own. We do not have satellite service so the GPS functions and internet access based programs will do the squad no good.

Just me thinking outside of the box and seeing how hard it would be to create this type of program.

do you have a link of said tutorials? I'd appreicate anything to continue my curiosity.

__________________
Yes, I'm the guy who set his sniper suit on fire last halloween...

Fire/EMS of HBT.com

quixotic

Recipes 

ArcExplorer doesn't need internet access: http://www.esri.com/software/arcexplorer/explorer.html
ESRI software is top notch. I use their Arc 9 program daily.

__________________
Bridger Brewing Co.
primary: Belgian wit
secondary:oatmeal stout
kegged: marzen
on tap: apfelwein
on tap: Northern Brewer/Vienna SMaSH
on deck: beer

phreephly

Recipes 

Homercidal,

Sorry, but whenever I see "M$" I think of this:

__________________
phreephly -

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.
-Dave Barry

brauhaus

Recipes 

Alright I downloaded the program, but ah... how do you use it? is there any user manuals or anything?

__________________
Yes, I'm the guy who set his sniper suit on fire last halloween...

Fire/EMS of HBT.com

quixotic

Recipes 

__________________
Bridger Brewing Co.
primary: Belgian wit
secondary:oatmeal stout
kegged: marzen
on tap: apfelwein
on tap: Northern Brewer/Vienna SMaSH
on deck: beer

k1v1116

Recipes 

the biggest issue I see is converting the data or designing a program to use the data (maps etc...) that is already formatted for On-Scene Xplorer. but my first reaction would be to look for linux programs that can handle each of the individual functions you need then just write a small program to tie the other programs together.

brauhaus

Recipes 

Thanks for the link! I was searching their site and was getting frustrated not finding anything. Multilated1 and Quixotic, thanks!

Hrmm, this many sound like and absolute n00b question, but would I be able to run a linux based program in windows?

I'm starting to think that this is way over my head and I'm going to tinker around with the Arc software to see if I can tweak that to my liking.

Thanks for everyone's input!

__________________
Yes, I'm the guy who set his sniper suit on fire last halloween...

Fire/EMS of HBT.com

k1v1116

Recipes 

well there are versions of linux that can run inside windows, but the easiest way would just be to run linux on whatever the machine is. you can also use something like vmware to simulate a computer within windows and run linux in that virtual environment but it tends to run a lot slower than just running linux straight up.

I only thought linux might be easier because it has thousands of small programs that preform a singular task very well and in linux you can tie whichever small programs you need together to make one program that does just about whatever you need.