How to track multiple vehicles with Maps API - google-maps

Question

I'm working on new application in my workplace as described below:
We have tens trucks working for us. I've installed a GPS module on each of them to track their position and store their coordinates in a database.
I need to see their movements in real time on a map (Google Maps, or Bing Maps) but I don't know how to do this.
I don't want code or snippets, I prefer Guidelines and API Docs or framework to build it!
If you have any question ask without problem! Thanks guys

Answer 1

Since you have the data in a database, the first step would be to expose that data to your app. There are a couple of different ways to do this depending on the type of app you want to create, however the most universal solution would be to create a web service that any of your apps can connect to. Here are a couple of good blog post on how to create spatial web services.
http://blogs.bing.com/maps/2013/07/31/how-to-create-a-spatial-web-service-that-connects-a-database-to-bing-maps-using-ef5
http://blogs.bing.com/maps/2013/08/05/advance-spatial-queries-using-entity-framework-5
Once you have a web service you can then create the app that will display the truck locations. You have a lot of options here; web, mobile, desktop (WPF, Windows app), cross platform. Web apps tend to be the most common as they can be accessed from the most locations. Connecting to a REST service from JavaScript is fairly easy. There is a number of different ways to load in real time data. The easiest is to use a timer that calls your web service regularly and grabs all truck locations. A slightly more complex option, but more efficient is to timestamp the last update of each location and then keep track of the last timestamp used to request an update. By doing this you can limit your request to only retrieve updates that have occurred since the last request. This would significantly reduce your bandwidth and make your app faster. Displaying the actual truck location on a map is easy. Your web service will return the location information, likely as either two number properties (i.e. latitude/longitude) or as a well known text string (simply parse this as shown in the previous blog posts). If using Bing Maps and you have two number properties, you can create a pushpin and add it to the map like this:
var loc = new Microsoft.Maps.Location(latitude,longitude);
var pin = new Microsoft.Maps.Pushpin(loc);
map.entities.push(loc);
Here are some useful resources around developing with Bing Maps:
https://www.bingmapsportal.com/ISDK/AjaxV7
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd877180.aspx
Note, if you use Bing or Google maps (or just about any other major mapping platform), they require all asset tracking applications to have a license to use the maps. If you use Bing Maps, you can find details on licensing here: https://www.microsoft.com/maps/licensing/licensing.aspx#mainTab4