The map&guide development team is proud to present its brand new product map&guide internet, a SaaS solution of the famous map&guide desktop.
It took around two years to re-implement the software from scratch as a SaaS solution.
The client is running completely in a browser without any plug-ins. Its implementation is done with JavaScript, HTML and the great libraries of Sencha ExtJS and jQuery. It is loosly coupled with the middleware by JSON RPC interfaces.
The middleware is implemented in .NET. This enables us to share components with the guys from the .NET-based desktop development teams in PTV. One of these shared components are the Business Services for the PTV xServer usage.
The whole product is built on PTV xServer technology. We use the standard PTV xLocate, xMap, xRoute and xTour components, together with TrafficInformation Servlet, AJAXMap Servlet and some product specific servlets that won’t be included with the PTV xServer SDK.
During the last two years, we built a lot of improvements in PTV xServer in order to fulfill the requirements needed for map&guide internet. You will benefit from this development for map&guide internet in your PTV xServer SDKs, too!
Here some of the features driven by the map&guide internet development:
- generic profile management for PTV xRoute Server: you can pass the whole vehicle profile by request
- toll scenarios
- emission calculation
- improved ferry handling
The picture shows a simplified version of the product architecture. In addition, we built our own shop infrastructure for subscription management, including direct integration with our ERP and CRM systems. Together with an improved support experience and the re-launch of our web site (http://www.mapandguide.com) we now are ready to sell.
Last but not least, we are proud to have a strong partnership with Microsoft because we host the whole infrastructure in Windows Azure, Microsofts cloud infrastructure (PaaS). This is another important topic for you: PTV xServer are able to run in Windows Azure, if this is an option for you in your own projects.
What’s next to come? During the next 12 month, we intend to provide our customers with an PTV xServer self service environment running in Windows Azure. We will use our experiences based on the development of map&guide internet to bring PTV xServer in the cloud, also for SDK purposes. PTV will use all these cloud capabilities to provide better PTV xServer experience.
map&guide internet will have several new releases and derivates during the next years; and I’m pretty sure that we will help to improve and enhance PTV xServer also in future versions.
(This article was provided by Christian Mähler. Thank you so much!)
