Navigation Technologies, the leading street-based data provider, required a Web-based application that would display annual changes to its existing data content. The system would need to give the user the flexibility to choose any area within North America and view the data at multiple scales. Data changes as defined by Navteq were to be categorized and displayed according to a color-coding system. The system needed to be able to quickly filter through Navteq’s dense amount of data stored in an Oracle Enterprise Database.

Great Arc provided a Web application for Navteq that provides the company with a quick method of viewing their data content and changes over time. Great Arc created a website using ESRI’s ArcIMS to connect to the Navteq Oracle database using the Oracle Spatial direct connect method. ASP.NET and VB.NET were used as the development environments. This application allows users to choose the state from which data content will be displayed. The map view then changes to the selected State and its counties. Once a county is chosen, the view zooms the county boundary and major road segments are displayed. The user can then zoom in further, with more data content being displayed at the closer zoom scales. Here, different segments of the road data are color-coded to represent Navteq data changes from year to year. A legend defining the color codes is displayed on the screen, depicting the reason for the data change.

The map display for the road content can be altered using a zoom level meter to quickly jump from one scale to another. The user also has the option of panning in all four directions while keeping the selected zoom level constant.