As Thomas Jung describes in his tutorial "WebDynpro ABAP Flash Islands: Google Maps" the licensing model for Google Maps might be a pain.
Why not use OpenStreetMap?
OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is like Wikipedia for maps. OpenStreetMap creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways. More information about the license you can get here : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ
The quality of the maps seems to be very different. I must say that the maps of the area where I live are even better than the maps of Google Maps.
Here you can see the street where I live in Google Maps
Here you can see the same area in OpenStreetMap
Please check the quality of the map for your area!
But to use OpenStreetMap in a WebDynpro Application we need a little bit more, we need a Adobe Flash application. I found Openscales (http://openscales.org/)
OpenScales
OpenScales is a Open Source (LGPL) mapping framework based on ActionScript 3 and Flex. It has been designed for building Rich Internet Mapping Applications easily. OpenScales uses the Maps of OpenStreetMap.
In the first step I took the Google Maps Application of Thomas Jung from the tutorial "WebDynpro ABAP Flash Islands: Google Maps" and copied the WebDynpro Application ZISL_GOOGLE_MAPS to ZISL_OSM_MAPS. In the second step I imported the osExample.swf from Openscales into the Mime repository of my new application ZISL_OSM_MAPS. In the next step I changed the swf file in the View V_FLEX_MAPS to osExample.swf. In the last step I made all Input fields invisible, because we do not need them. They have no function in this first proof of technic. Without any problem I got this:
Play around with the example application on http://openscales.org/ . I promise you, you will be impressed!
In the next step I will communicate between the WebDynpro application and the Flex application. But this is worth to open a new Blog. This could be the beginning of my first blog series 🙂
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