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Advantage API™ Product White Paper Executive Summary The Advantage API development environment provides maximum flexibility to build customized location enabled applications in your preferred programming language. A full API provides access to the complete Advantage feature set including optimized and multi-point routing, style file management, geographic data management, and multiple search paradigms, allowing developers to easily incorporate advanced location enabled functionality into web and wireless applications deployed across their businesses. Libraries include support for the leading programming languages including C++, Java, COM (enabling Microsoft Visual Basic, ASP, ASP.NET), and ADP. Since it’s based on a unified product architecture, Advantage API customers can easily migrate to Advantage Enterprise to bring the entire solution into their data center for enhanced control, security and performance. 11/4/2005 Advantage API Product White Paper CONFIDENTIAL Table of Contents 1 What is Advantage API? 1 2 Advantage API Features 4 3 System Architecture 6 4 Mapping 8 5 Geocoding 10 6 Routing 11 7 Searching & Databases 13 8 Local Spatial Search Server 14 9 Geographic Coverage 16 10 Technical Specifications 17 11 The Bottom Line 19 Advantage API Product White Paper ii CONFIDENTIAL 1 What is Advantage API? The Advantage API™ hosted service is a location technology platform that enables developers to integrate anti-aliased maps, driving directions, geocoding, proximity searching, and other location-based technologies into Web and desktop applications. The Advantage API hosted service uses the advanced server technology of MapQuest’s Advantage Enterprise solution. Advantage API offers developers tools that can integrate advanced location-based technology into applications using a robust, scalable development platform. Advantage API includes: • The best-looking map images available in the industry • Advanced mapping, geocoding, driving directions, and searching technology • A highly scalable architecture that supports more than 30 million maps and driving directions every day on MapQuest.com • Support for Java, C#, C++, Visual Basic, .NET, ASP, and ADP languages • Extensive technical documentation and online resources • Access to live developer phone support and optional on-site services • A clean upgrade to a behind-the-firewall solution with Advantage Enterprise MapQuest Technology Platform MapQuest is the world’s most trusted brand in online maps and driving directions, with over 37 years of cartographic experience. The MapQuest technology platform was designed to meet the demanding requirements of the consumer Web site MapQuest.com, which processes over 30 million transactions every day. With its advanced server technology and industry-leading geographic data partners, MapQuest is the only company that can provide businesses with a full range of scalable location technology solutions. MapQuest is the location-based services industry leader, trusted by over 1,400 customers of its MapQuest Business Solutions unit, including industry leaders such as Walmart, Travelocity, OnStar, CitySearch, Harley-Davidson, Amtrak, BellSouth, Chrysler, Starwood, Sears, Orbitz, Blockbuster, and LendingTree. Experience gained from successfully meeting the constantly evolving needs of business customers such as these has enabled MapQuest to develop powerful developerfriendly solutions that can be easily deployed within organizations of all sizes. MapQuest combines its own custom data with that of the best partners in the business, including: NAVTEQ, AND Data Solutions, and DMTI Spatial, to name but a few. Advantage API Product White Paper 1 CONFIDENTIAL What is Advantage API? MapQuest Technology Platform The Advantage Product Line MapQuest offers a comprehensive line of enterprise-class developer products based on a single technology platform that integrates the world’s best geographic data. The proprietary server technology utilized by MapQuest.com is the core of all products in the Advantage product line. The three products comprising the Advantage product line offer different levels of functionality and control. With a unified product architecture, customers can easily upgrade to more powerful products as their business needs change. The Advantage product line includes the following: • Site Advantage™. Features basic maps, driving directions, and searches. • Advantage API™. Provides application flexibility and full API access to the geocoding, mapping, driving directions, and search engines. Offers multiplepoint and “optimized” routing. Searches databases with SQL WHERE clauses. • Advantage Enterprise™ solution. Offers complete server control plus all the API access of Advantage API. Customize geocoding, mapping, driving directions, and searching with advanced APIs. Deploy multiple Advantage Enterprise servers for a scalable behind-the-firewall solution. Table 1, Features Across the Advantage Product Line Site Advantage Advantage API Advantage Enterprise Basic maps, routing, and search Yes Yes Yes Automatic data selection Yes Yes Yes Advanced maps, routing, and search Yes Yes Advanced geocoding control Yes Yes Reverse geocoding Yes Yes Convert pixels to latitude/longitude Yes Yes Search for embedded map elements Yes Yes Choose an explicit server data set Yes Yes Route optimization Yes Yes Route matrix API Yes Yes Search by maximum drive time Yes Yes Modify map image Yes Yes Feature supported by... Advantage API Product White Paper 2 CONFIDENTIAL What is Advantage API? Advantage Product Line Applications Table 1, Features Across the Advantage Product Line Site Advantage Feature supported by... Draw shapes/text on map Advantage API Advantage Enterprise Yes Yes Server configuration control Yes Map layer importing Yes Unlimited API access and server control Yes Advantage Product Line Applications Advantage API™ is a location technology platform for a wide range of Internet, intranet, and wireless applications. Customers can integrate mapping, routing, geocoding, and search capabilities into Web or desktop applications across different segments of the enterprise within any industry. MapQuest Business Solutions customers use the Advantage product line in a variety of industries: • Store/dealer locators. Enable Web site searches for locations with optional maps and driving directions for nearby dealerships or retail locations. Optionally integrate MapQuest technologies with voice recognition and textto-speech to create automated voice-enabled call centers. • Real estate. You’ll have the ability to provide home buyers, sellers, and real estate agents with useful local information. You’ll also have the capability to layer additional visual information such as aerial photographs, regional demographic data, schools, and parks. • Business directories. Integrate local business and location content with MapQuest mapping, geocoding, and proximity searching capabilities. • Tourism and hospitality. Provide Web site and concierge tools for travelers, including trip planners and searches for local points of interest. • Call centers. Include enhanced directory assistance, fleet management and dispatch, emergency roadside assistance, and reservation systems. • Asset tracking. Track the location of vehicles or other assets and display using maps on web or wireless interfaces. • Logistics. Use drive-time computations for efficient scheduling of field employees who visit multiple customer locations. • Wireless. Use MapQuest’s scalable, Internet-based technology and flexible display interfaces to create new applications for navigation, search, friend/family finders, traffic advisories, and more. Advantage API Product White Paper 3 CONFIDENTIAL 2 Advantage API Features The Advantage API solution, which is based on the Advantage product line’s core MapQuest technology platform, offers the following features: • Mapping. Display, interact with, and customize high-quality maps. Add custom icons, annotate maps with drawings, or customize map styles. Display different levels of detail or icons at different map scales. • Geocoding. Assign latitude/longitude coordinates to a street address, a postal code, a city, a state, or location. Receive detailed information about each match to decide how to best process ambiguous or low confidence matches. • Driving directions (routing). Generate visual and/or textual navigation directions from one location to another with optional intermediate destinations. Select the fastest route, the shortest route, or other route options. Generate an “optimized” multi-destination route to reorder intermediate destinations into the fastest route between origin and destination. • Proximity searching. Search for the closest locations within a set radius, a rectangular or defined polygonal area, or along a drive route. Use dynamic database queries to search for specific criteria about that location. API clients can upload and manage locations using a set of tools hosted by MapQuest. • Proximity by Drive Time. You can use search APIs in conjunction with routing APIs to search for all locations within a certain proximity to an origin point. You may search by either driving distance or driving time. Proximity searching by drive distance or time can be particularly useful when searching near bodies of water or mountains, where straight-line distance does not accurately reflect drive time. • Points of Interest (POIs). Search your own custom location databases containing location information for stores, restaurants, hotels, etc., or license large Points of Interest databases and gain access to location information concerning local landmarks or businesses. • Automatic data selection. Use MapQuest’s proprietary data selection technology to provide the best data for each request, dynamically choosing among multiple data sets from the world’s leading data providers. • Voice-recognition integration capability. Create a voice interface for location searching using MapQuest’s valued partnership with NetByTel, the leading provider of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. • Technical support. Access technical support using comprehensive online documentation, or obtain phone and e-mail support from dedicated business account managers and knowledgeable 24/7 technical support personnel. • Reporting. Generate various transaction reports using an online interface. Use custom geographic area reports or other reports to track trends and provide the basis for vital business decisions. Advantage API Product White Paper 4 CONFIDENTIAL • Location management. Manage locations in MapQuest-hosted databases with online tools available 24/7. You can upload locations, customize locations, add locations, and examine location data in a staging server before pushing data to the “live” database. Advantage API Product White Paper 5 CONFIDENTIAL Syst em Architecture Advantage Product Line Applications 3 System Architecture Developers can integrate Advantage API into a Web application, desktop application, wireless WAP application, Java application, back-end enterprise system, or voice activated phone system; the possibilities are limitless. Below are some basic elements of an Advantage API deployment: The client application. This is your application that utilizes the MapQuest client interface. Implement your application in .NET, C++, Visual Basic, Java, ASP, and ADP. Additionally, you can implement your application by using the HTTP protocol without client libraries. For details of the supported environments, refer to “Client Requirements” on page 17. Your application invokes the MapQuest API to communicate with a MapQuest server and to read/write MapQuest data structures. The client interface. This interface takes the form of MapQuest-provided libraries that typically link with a custom application or are installed as a shared library plugin for a Web server. The MapQuest client interface communicates with one or more MapQuest servers to provide the core MapQuest functionality: mapping, geocoding, routing, and proximity searching. Client-to-server communication uses a proprietary protocol based on the industry standard protocol HTTP. This communication can use optional authentication and/or encryption. The results of a request are returned to the client interface and returned to the client application using the MapQuest API. The MapQuest server is unique to Advantage Enterprise and provides all the advanced MapQuest server functionality, often with the help of database servers (for location data) and session servers (to improve interactive map performance). For Advantage API customers, the Advantage API servers on the Internet perform this function. The MapQuest server. Web Applications and Image Handling Although most non-Web applications directly request both information and images from the MapQuest server, Web applications work slightly differently because they display images indirectly by exposing HTML IMG tags within HTML code. Web applications do not need to cache map images locally because the Web application never needs to download images to the Web server. Instead, the Web application uses the MapQuest API to request an “image URL” from the MapQuest server, and this URL can be exposed within an HTML IMG tag. When a user’s Web browser wants to display the image, it requests it from the MapQuest server. Compatibility with standard Web browsers is easy because the image URLs (like all MapQuest client-server requests) use a protocol based on HTTP, the universal standard of the World Wide Web. Advantage API Product White Paper 6 CONFIDENTIAL See the following diagram for a general system architecture design. Advantage API Architecture Advantage API Product White Paper 7 CONFIDENTIAL Mapping Mapping Features 4 Mapping Advantage API can generate interactive anti-aliased maps centered on any location and can be customized with icons, text labels, shapes, and even specific elements of the maps. Example Map and Search Results Mapping Features Best-of-class interactive maps. Millions of visitors each month use MapQuest’s popular interactive maps on their online mapping Web site. Advantage API can improve readability of bitmap images by smoothing transitions between colors using anti-aliasing. For instance, black text on a white background is smoothed by adding nearby grey pixels. Anti-aliased maps. Automatic map data selection. Let the server choose the best mapping data for the requested map. For instance, one data set might be used for metropolitan areas and another for rural areas. Additionally, maps show the correct level of detail for the map scale by hiding and displaying map elements. Panning. Provide latitude and longitude for the map center, or allow the user to click on the map to re-center the map at that location. View maps at an arbitrary “zoom” setting, choose customizable zoom levels, or let a user click on a rectangle to approximate the desired map scale. Zooming. Best fit. The server can automatically adjust center point and scale to best highlight any visible Points of Interest. For example, if a user searches for POIs, the mapping engine can calculate the center point and scale that nicely displays all results. Map styles. Built-in map styles include the default MapQuest style, yellow background maps, black-and-white maps, and European styles. Anti-aliased images are available for all map styles. Advantage API Product White Paper 8 CONFIDENTIAL Map style customization. Developers can programatically change map object appearance by general class or by name. Element styles include colors, fonts, icons, line widths, road shield appearance, and dynamic hiding/showing of map elements. Display map features with unique icons and optional text labels. Create these dynamically from user interaction, from dynamic database queries, or from other application-specific search results. Map icons. Point-and-click APIs. MapQuest APIs allow clients to implement features to allow their users to click with a mouse to pan, zoom, identify streets, identify map features, and other actions. For example, allow users to use a mouse to select a map feature for more information or click-and-drag a mouse to define search areas. Supported formats include GIF, PNG, EPS (Encapsulated PostScript), WBMP, and more. Non-bitmap formats like EPS include non-rasterized text and lines for high-resolution display and printing. Multiple image formats. Map Annotations Applications can draw simple shapes or text on maps to highlight map features, search areas, or other custom data. For example, display the search radius for a recent proximity search, demarcate boundaries of an important geographic region, identify sub-map regions, or highlight an abstract feature such as “Geofences” to track assets and personnel. Drawing objects include ellipses, circles, rectangles, squares, custom icons, lines, closed polygons, and text. Use custom line colors, fill colors, fill patterns, fonts, font sizes, and font styles. Additionally, you can use primitive characteristics. One such example is ‘opacity’, a primitive characteristic that can be changed. You can display drawing objects on top of other map information or embed drawing objects between specific visual layers of map information. For instance, you could draw a polygon ‘on top of’ streets but ‘below’ highlighted driving directions. Session Management Applications can create and manage session data to improve context from one page view to the next. Session data describes the map size, style, annotations, and search results for faster application development and short map image URLs. Advantage API Product White Paper 9 CONFIDENTIAL 5 Geocoding Advantage API contains a powerful geocoding engine to calculate a location’s latitude and longitude coordinates in order to display the location, or use the coordinates for other actions such as searches. Advantage API can calculate the latitude and longitude of: • Street addresses and intersections, using the most accurate geocoding methods. • Street blocks, including the nearest block to an invalid street number address. • Postal codes, including ZIP, ZIP+2, and ZIP+4 codes. • Centers of administrative areas, such as states, provinces and countries Although the results of geocoding are often used to display a map centered on a particular location or to calculate driving directions using the routing API, you may use the coordinates in any manner you choose. If you geocode a location and exact coordinates cannot be found, the geocoding engine can ‘fall back’ to other data and estimate a location based on that information. For example, the server may not know the location of 123 Fake Street in Philadelphia, PA, but it might be able to estimate the center of the likely postal code instead. Use the default server-based geocoding rules to ‘fall back’ to useful data or define your own complex geocoding rules using multiple data sets.The server can allow slight differences between user input addresses and server data. For instance, if a user provides “123 N. Main,” the address can match the street address “123 North Main Street.” When allowing non-exact matches, some geocoding data supports correcting directionals (North versus South), road types (Street versus Road), and sound-alike matches for street names, cities, states, and other administrative areas. Each geocoding request returns detailed result codes that describe confidence information about each address element (except the ‘state’ element). Use this information to decide whether the results are useful and/or how to use multiple matches within your user interface. The geocoding engine also supports reverse geocoding, which takes a latitude and longitude pair and returns a full street address. For example, roadside assistance or emergency dispatch services can extract latitude/longitude information from phones with Global Positioning System (GPS) features and generate human-readable street addresses as well as driving directions. Reverse geocoding is supported by all United States data sets. Contact MapQuest regarding support within other international data sets. Advantage API customers can use online tools to upload and geocode large numbers of locations. The online interface allows clicking on a map to reposition a location. Advantage API Product White Paper 10 CONFIDENTIAL Routing Mapping Features 6 Routing Advantage API provides a robust routing API for calculating driving directions between two locations and unlimited optional intermediate destinations1. Advantage API supports the routing data from multiple vendors worldwide. MapQuest’s routing algorithms include proprietary heuristics for intersection crossings, turn costs, long distance artery filtering, and other features for high performance routing. You can use the routing API on its own or in conjunction with the mapping API. You can highlight a driving route on a map or display textual driving directions, as shown below. Driving Directions Overview Map Full route result map customization. Easily highlight a route on a map, as above. Use the default route highlight style or design your own. You can also create sub-maps for each maneuver (leg) of the journey or create sub-maps for the origin and destination. Textual driving directions (routing narrative). The routing engine optionally provides textual driving directions that contain maneuver (turn-by-turn) directions with distances measured in either kilometers or miles. You may also display state and country boundaries. The following is an example of textual driving directions: 1. Turn RIGHT on to SOUTH ST. Drive 0.2 miles. 2. Merge onto I-76 E (Portions toll). Drive 58.77 miles. 3. Take the exit number 286 toward US-222. Drive 1.06 miles. 4. Merge onto US-222 S. Drive 15.21 miles. Provide three or more locations in a route and the routing engine will calculate directions through intermediate destinations. Multiple location routing. 1. Optimized routes do not permit the generation of unlimited intermediate destinations. Advantage API Product White Paper 11 CONFIDENTIAL Advantage API supports intelligent routing when using more than three locations in a route. The server can generate an “optimized” route, which reorders intermediate destinations to generate the fastest route for the entire journey. Optimized multi-destination routing. Routing using latitude and longitude. Specify locations using latitude and longitude to let the server find the closest drivable locations. This allows users to click on a map and generate navigation directions to or from that point. Use the geocoding and the routing APIs together to provide door-to-door driving directions from street addresses. Routing using street addresses. Route customization. The routing engine can generate different types of routes, including shortest distance routes, fastest time routes, pedestrian routes, or “optimized” multi-destination route. Other options include routes that avoid certain road types and changing the language of textual driving directions. You can also specify particular route segments you wish to avoid along a particular route. Automatic data selection. Request a route without manually choosing specific routing data on the server. Simply request a route and let the server choose the best vendor and coverage data. You can even let the server determine the best data without requesting the route immediately — a helpful feature when routing data is distributed across multiple high-performance servers. Route matrix calculation. Applications can efficiently automate the calculation of driving distance and driving time among many locations in a list. Choose between a one-to-all route matrix or a larger all-to-all route matrix. Advantage API Product White Paper 12 CONFIDENTIAL 7 Searching & Databases Advantage API includes powerful location-searching APIs to search for locations within a given geographic area, calculate distances between locations, and search for locations using dynamic database queries. For example, you may enable your users to search for the closest restaurants in their neighborhood or search for all hotels within 10 minutes driving time from a tourist attraction. You may also search for custom locations stored in a database, a collection of “manually” created locations programmatically, features from map data, or even features returned from previous searches. Search Any Data in Any Geographic Area Look for all custom locations in a geographic area, or request only those possessing specific attributes. This flexibility allows applications to provide users with a user interface that allows them to design custom proximity searches. This is critical for applications with large numbers of locations of varied types and attributes. Advantage API customers can use custom SQL WHERE clauses to limit database searches to any record set specified with this type of SQL query fragment. Advantage API customers can access virtually unlimited custom locations and up to 100 database fields in MapQuest-hosted databases. Use database connectivity to: • Search for locations within a specified radius, rectangle, or polygon. • Search for locations around a path, such as a journey calculated with the routing API. This feature is also called a corridor search. • Search with a simple database record API. You can even access nonMapQuest-specific database fields. • Integrate location data sets with customer-specific corporate data. For instance, filter retail store search results based on their store hours. Database Connectivity Advantage API customers do not need a database server because MapQuest hosts all of your location data on high-performance servers. Advantage API customers upload and update location data using MapQuest Web applications called the Data Manager™. Advantage API Product White Paper 13 CONFIDENTIAL 8 Local Spatial Search Server The Local Spatial Search Server (LSSS) allows Advantage API users to search their own databases without first uploading database information to MapQuest servers. The LSSS is especially beneficial in cases where databases are so large (one million or more records) that it's impractical to upload them to MapQuest servers. The LSSS is also beneficial in situations involving highly sensitive data or data that is updated very frequently, such as hotel data that is updated daily. Since LSSS allows databases to reside locally instead of on MapQuest servers, users can utilize standard database APIs such as ODBC, JDBC, OLEDB, etc. to perform normal database searches. LSSS operates using the same underlying platform that powers MapQuest's Advantage Enterprise product, making transitioning to Advantage Enterprise a smooth and seamless procedure. With LSSS you can use database connectivity to perform the following types of searches: Radius searches. Search for locations a set radius from a center point, and choose the maximum number of matches to return from the search. Drive time searches. Search a list of defined locations by their driving distance or drive time from a point of origin. Search for locations a set distance around a path, such as a journey calculated using the routing API. Corridor searches. User-defined polygon searches. Search for locations within a defined polygonal area. Rectangular searches. Search for locations within a defined rectangular area. You can integrate location data sets with customer-specific corporate databases. For example, an application could filter bookstore proximity search results based on book availability determined through 100% dynamic database searches. Additionally, you can use custom SQL WHERE clauses to limit database searches to any record set specified with this type of SQL query fragment. Database Connectivity Advantage Enterprise customers can use database servers with an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) drivers on supported platforms to store location data for custom map icons and proximity searches. Advantage API Product White Paper 14 CONFIDENTIAL L o c a l S p a t i a l S e a rc h S e r v e r Mapping Features ODBC Driver Manager For Non-Microsoft systems MapQuest provides the unixODBC driver manager with LSSS. This driver manager ensures the proper driver is loaded. It is up to you, however, to select the driver you wish to load. The unixODBC driver manager and some drivers may be downloaded at: http://www.unixodbc.org/, or you may purchase a driver from a 3rd party vendor. The diagram below depicts the relationship between MapQuest, LSSS, and a Client Organization. The Local Spatial Search Server (LSSS), in combination with the Open DataBase Connectivity (ODBC) driver provided by the client, allows the client to search their local databases. NOTE: The ODBC/JDBC component may or may not be contained in your application. Advantage API Product White Paper 15 CONFIDENTIAL 9 Geographic Coverage Licensed Data for Maps, Routing, and Geocoding MapQuest’s data partners are the best in the business. You can use Advantage API with the latest data from data providers including: • Navigation Technologies (NAVTEQ) • DMTI Spatial • AND Data Solutions • Group1/Sagent • LeadDog Consulting • MapQuest Proprietary Mapping Solutions (MapQuest proprietary data) Standard regions include all countries in North America and Western Europe, with new countries added regularly. For the latest list of available geographic data, please contact MapQuest. Licensed Points Of Interest (POI) You can also license databases of custom locations called Points Of Interest (POIs). NAVTEQ POI databases cover the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Search the database for one record or all records of a specific category to add context to your proximity searches and spatial displays. For the latest list of available POI data, please contact MapQuest. Automatic Data Selection MapQuest’s proprietary data selection technology provides the best data for each request in any geographic region with any geographic data. Automatic data selection algorithms are available for geocoding, mapping, and routing data. Advantage API Product White Paper 16 CONFIDENTIAL Technical Specifications Database Requirements 10 Technical Specifications Database Requirements Advantage API customers do not need a database server because MapQuest hosts your location data. You can upload new location data or modify it with a suite of Web applications called the MapQuest Data Manager™. Advantage API customers can access virtually unlimited custom locations with up to 100 fields in MapQuest-hosted databases. Utility Application Requirements Customers can use utility applications provided with the products to customize some parts of the product. For example, you can prepare custom icons, edit map style files, or create “spatial IDs” to increase performance of proximity searches. These tools require a computer running Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 operating systems. Client Requirements To connect with the server, you will need at least one client system that would connect with the server. The MapQuest client applications and the MapQuest client libraries may run on the same computer as the server, although this is not recommended for highest performance. For a typical Web application, the Web server would be considered the MapQuest client. To compile and link code with MapQuest client programming interfaces, you must have development tools compatible with at least one of the following interfaces: Table 2, Supported Languages and Development Environments Platform Java C++ COM & .NET ADP Windows 2000 JDK 1.4 VS 6.0 SP6, VS .NET 2003* VS6.0 SP6, VS .NET 2003* Solaris 2.8 JDK 1.4 GNU 2.95.3, Forte 6.0 AOLServer 3.5** Red Hat Linux AS2.1 JDK 1.4 GNU 2.96 AOLServer 3.5** ** You will need to install the ADP client interface library on the AOLServer server. Advantage API Product White Paper 17 CONFIDENTIAL Technical Specifications MapQuest Hosting Facilities MapQuest Hosting Facilities The servers providing the back end of the Advantage API service are hosted within the data facilities of America Online (AOL) Network Operations, making it part of one of the world’s most robust hosting operations. MapQuest’s hosting system has been designed to meet the performance and availability needs of high volume customers who serve tens of millions of maps and driving directions each day. Advantage API servers are maintained in geographically separated, redundant data centers connected through AOL’s national backbone to multiple Internet subnetwork backbones. The highly reliable AOL facilities include redundant power grids, on-site diesel generators, redundant servers on multiple networks, dry fire systems, and high security physical access restrictions. To ensure disaster recovery capabilities, multiple data centers are used and backups are performed regularly, including offsite copies. Advantage API Product White Paper 18 CONFIDENTIAL The Bottom Line MapQuest Hosting Facilities 11 The Bottom Line For companies seeking flexible, reliablelocation technology solutions, Advantage API offers a significant return on your investment with capabilities such as: • Industry-leading maps, driving directions, and proximity searching • Unique advanced technology such as multi-point route optimization • Compatibility with popular platforms and development environments • 24/7 emergency technical support • Technology evolved from 37 years of experience in cartography • Flexibility to use powerful defaults or override behavior using the API • Automatic scalability with high performance MapQuest-hosted servers • Fast application development and deployment • A clean upgrade path to full server control with Advantage Enterprise • Database integration Contact MapQuest today to discover how Advantage API can benefit your organization. Email: [email protected] Phone: 888-MAPQUEST (888-627-7837) International callers can dial (303) 312-0176 with country code +1. Advantage API Product White Paper 19 CONFIDENTIAL The Bottom Line About MapQuest About MapQuest MapQuest is the world leader in mapping, driving directions, and destination information to consumers and businesses. MapQuest, a wholly-owned subsidiary of America Online, Inc. has three business units: • MapQuest.com ranks within the top 10 most powerful Internet brands in the U.S., according to NetRatings. Serves over 29 million unique visitors per month and delivering over 30 million maps and driving directions per day. • MapQuest Business Solutions provides a full range of location-based services solutions to more than 1,400 leading businesses in industries such as retail, healthcare, financial, real estate, travel, and automotive. • Creative Mapping Solutions is the world’s leading provider of custom maps for publishers and corporations, producing more than 1.5 billion pages of printed maps for telephone directories, textbooks, travel guides, and more. Copyrights & Trademarks Copyright 2005 MapQuest.com, Inc. All rights reserved. The use of this documentation and the product with which it is provided are governed by the product license agreement and copyright law. No part of the product or this documentation may be reproduced in any form by any means without prior written authorization from MapQuest.com, Inc. MapQuest may revise this documentation from time to time without notice. THIS DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. IN NO EVENT SHALL MAPQUEST, ITS PARENT OR ITS LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM ANY ERROR IN THIS DOCUMENTATION, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY LOSS OR INTERRUPTION OF BUSINESS, PROFITS, USE, OR DATA. The downloading, exporting, or reexporting of MapQuest products or any underlying information or technology must be in full compliance with all United States and other applicable laws and regulations. Any provision of a MapQuest product or documentation to the U.S. government is with restricted rights as described in the license agreement for that product. MapQuest, MapQuest.com, the MapQuest logo, Advantage, Site Advantage, Advantage API, and Advantage Enterprise are either registered trademarks or trademarks of MapQuest.com, Inc. Other product and brand names are trademarks of their respective owners. Advantage API Product White Paper 20 CONFIDENTIAL