Embedding slippy map in Access form

Question

I have an access database which holds several sites. This is linked to a MapInfo TAB file which holds geometry for each site.

I would like for our non-GIS users to be able to view the sites in an interactive way (i.e. a slippy map with layers, not just a static image - I've already got static images in there) rather than having to boot up MapInfo or, worse, ask someone else to...

I have embedded a MapInfo mapper inside a form but distributing this has proved to be more expensive than I originally expected (though to be fair my expectations may have been unreasonable!).

As far as I know it is not possible to embed HTML in a form - otherwise I would use OpenLayers or similar.

I could include a link to a web-based map but that isn't ideal...

Any suggestions? What software is available for this sort of thing?

Answer 1

i apologize if this ends up being too handwavey to be useful, but here goes. Back in the day we'd make Access GIS apps using the ESRI MapObjects map control. Sounds similar to you. We also would use a WebBrowser control to display HTML content. So maybe you can display a web map inside a WebBrowser control? What you need is an ActiveX control - now whether we got ours installed with Access, or as part of VB6, or Visual Studio I don't recall - one of those anyway. And of course now that I think of it, if you find a WebBrowser control from that era, it is unlikely to support modern Javascript, so the map might not work anyway. If you have a web map that works in IE6, I'd be hopeful.

All that said, you might instead want to look an another ActiveX-based map control that may or may not be slippy, but would be a more fully featured GIS, maybe the MapWinGIS control from the MapWindow project? http://www.mapwindow.org/

Best of luck!