Good News - The Bing Maps Siverlight control has finally been officially released and you can now download the Control's SDK here.

Following this I have updated the original post I made showing QlikView integration with Silverlight.

There were only really a couple of minor changes to the map API which I needed to account for in order to upgrade the demo. The only other change is that an API key is also now also required to use the control, similar to Google Maps.

I have also taken the opportunity to develop the demo a little to now include separate 'clickable' pointers for each loan on the map (as shown in the image above right).

The demo is shown below but note if you are viewing this in an RSS reader or on a device which does not support Silverlight it will probably be blank!

RSS readers can click here to see the original post.

NOTE: I am currently trying to find time to patch this to work with QlikView Server 9!

Having wanted to do something with both Silverlight, Mapping and Kiva for a while now (and of course QlikView) I finally found time to put together the following application. I think it might be the first example of integrating QlikView and Silverlight together, but if there are other applications out there I would be really interested in seeing what people are doing.

The data for the application is from Kiva, an organisation whose mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva supports micro financing - loans rather than charity - to entrepreneurs in developing countries. I think it's a great idea and Kiva are also very developer friendly having released a well documented RESTful API a number of months ago. I use this to load in all the loans each morning so the application is always relatively fresh.

The mapping is provided by the CTP of the Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control which provides much slicker, smoother and more detailed panning and zooming than the web version as well as better performance.

The remainder of the application is made up of standard Silverlight controls and code to communicate with QlikView Server.

I hope to extend the application in the future. Initially I would like to use the size/shape/colour of the circles to show additional information such as loan amount and risk. The complication is that many of the loans share the same latitude and longitude so I first need to develop a better system of creating 'pointed' markers which do not overlap one another.

So here it is - version 1.0. Hopefully a few QlikView fans (fanatics?) can now use their favourite BI tool to find a worthy project at Kiva.

UPDATE: 22nd November 2009: I have now updated this app to use the newly released version of Bing Maps.