World Map with Custom Marker Positions- ASP.NET
<p>I'm looking for some suggestions as to how I could implement a World Map with custom positioned markers. My client would like a world map that represents the locations of his Licensees.</p>

<p>I have been provided with the following xml as the data source for the map.</p>

<pre><code>  &lt;Licensee id="1"&gt;
  &lt;Continent&gt;Africa&lt;/Continent&gt; 
  &lt;Brand&gt;All&lt;/Brand&gt; 
  &lt;CompanyName&gt;ABC Industries PLC&lt;/CompanyName&gt; 
  &lt;Country&gt;Nigeria&lt;/Country&gt;
  &lt;xRef&gt;123&lt;/xRef&gt;  &lt;!-- does not exist --&gt;
  &lt;yRef&gt;123&lt;/yRef&gt;  &lt;!-- does not exist --&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>Above is an example of 1 Licensee in the xml. The xRef and yRef data does not exist yet. My first idea was to make use of the ASP.NET image library which could overlay a marker for each Licensee onto a world map. </p>

<p>It would read the co-ordinates from xRef/yRef fields - these would actually reflect the positioning of the marker on the image (eg xRef = 0, yRef = 0 means very top left corner of the world map).</p>

<p>The client has requested a 'managed' solution, so that when he adds more licensees to the xml the new licensees will appear on the world map, hence why I need to programmatically generate these map markers.</p>

<p>The client is 'ok' with the fact that when he adds a new Licensee he will have trial/error the exact positioning of the marker (pixel offset).</p>

<p>I just wanted to know if anyone else has a better idea before I start working on this. Ideally we would like to avoid flash.</p>

<p>It is quite likely we will dump the xml into a database and provide a front end for the client.</p>
