GIS Software / Service Question

[jasonmarsh]

Hello Everyone ~

I have little knowledge of all things GIS/GEO related. I've been tasked with finding a product/service/object that will allow the company I work for to do some GEO based reporting.

Basically I need to know for a given zip code, how many insurance providers are within a given area (among other things). Obviously, we have the provider data and I realize I will need to load it into whatever system I find.

My question, though, is what is a good solution for this? I see plenty of offerings available but they numb my brain looking at them honestly. I am an experienced programmer and would be ok with a .NET component/assembly to do this. If there is something already bundled that would allow custom data import and query upon it, that would be great too.

I appreciate, in advance, any help.

Thank you, Jason

 

[gmmastros]

How accurate do you need to be? Do you need to show locations (on a map) or do you simply need to pull the retailers within a certain distance?

Anyway... I think this thread may give you an idea or 2. It uses SQL Server to store a table of zipcodes and their corresponding Latitude/Longitude coordinate. This thread also shows a method for calculating distances give a pair of latitude/longitude coordinates.

thread183-1197121

Hope this helps.

-George

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. - Fortune cookie wisdom

 

[philhege]

You could probably marry this with some sort of Google Maps mashup.

Most of the commercial solutions are, um, rather pricey.