Interaction between map and another web application - The Best Technique?

[BarisUz]

Dear All,

We want to know the best technique for integrating map application with other web applications. The "other" web application is a .Net-based web application and it has several other functions. Let's say, in one of its functions, they have a query for school names. When they query a school, we will display a map in a panel (iFrame, etc) and the user will be able to interact (zoom in/out, pan, etc) with that map. Initially, the "other" application does not display any map. Let's assume further that, if there are more than 1 school with the same name. Then, schools will be displayed in the map, the map will be zoomed to the extent of both schools, and whenever a school is clicked, the map will display it with another symbol, etc.

In a similar way, when user clicks on the "Map" part of the application, the "other" part will be able to display "something" related with that location (for example, a related information about that school, or a comment form about that school, etc.). The thing is that, we don't want these (commenting, etc) functionality be implemented by the "Map" part of the application.

The "other" application shall have no GIS programming parts. And the Map application has no other logic than responding to "map"-related queries. In other words, "other" application will call some services from the Map application to have map displayed.

The question: what's the best technique to achieve this kind of two-way integration?

Any suggestions?

[JoeHershman · Accepted solution]

You might want to look at something like Prism (it is part of Microsoft Practices and on codeplex).  That is what I have been using for Silverlight applications.  It provides a modular framework and an event framework which sounds like what you want.  It also provides the ability to use Dependency Injection with either MEF or Unity and a good commanding architecture to help with developing MVVM applications.

As an example in my site I have an application that keeps a table of points for graphics that the user is adding to a map.  I also have a couple applications that allow the users to draw graphics on a map.  Every time the user adds a graphic in one of the drawing applications it sends off an event.  The application that keeps the table is listening for that event and when it receives the event updates the table.

[BarisUz]

Thanks for your answer. For bi-directional interaction what you suggest sounds like one of the solutions. I think we will implement one-way only at the beginning - from the "other" application to map. We will achieve this by providing some URLs with parametric queries, to display map in a requested format.