Hi,
I'm new to GIS and mapping applications, so this may be a dumb question.
I'm trying to incorporate tabular data from a local SQL Server database with spatial data that I'm getting from a map service, particularly (for now), in the Map Tip.
I've already managed, with this forum's help (thank you, Dominique) to use a simple Converter to take one piece of data from the map service (a site's primary key), and use it to lookup and return a different piece of data (the site's name) that's not returned by the service. However, that's a really simple case, and required me, in the Silverlight page's Loaded event handler, to fetch a dictionary of site ID's and site names and store it locally in the browser in anticipation of it being needed.
I've got boat loads more tabular data I'd like to display in the map tip. So what I'm wondering is, what's the best approach. As I see it, and again I'm new to GIS, there are two options:
1. Create a local service (REST? WCF?) that acts as a proxy to the map service. Point the map feature layer at the local service. That service then communicates with the actual map service, and then returns the results from the map service, plus whatever tabular data is needed from the SQL database, back to the feature layer.
2. Handle some event of the map tip, right before it displays, to fire off a service call to a local service which fetches the tabular data I'm interested in (I don't even know if this event exists, however).
There may be other options as well. I should mention that I don't have access to the map service, so I can't go in and tell it what additional data I'd like to return.
Anyway, if you have any suggestions, I'd me most grateful.
Thanks.
Aaron
