World Map with Custom Marker Positions- ASP.NET

I'm looking for some suggestions as to how I could implement a World Map with custom positioned markers. My client would like a world map that represents the locations of his Licensees.

I have been provided with the following xml as the data source for the map.

  <Licensee id="1">
  <Continent>Africa</Continent> 
  <Brand>All</Brand> 
  <CompanyName>ABC Industries PLC</CompanyName> 
  <Country>Nigeria</Country>
  <xRef>123</xRef>  <!-- does not exist -->
  <yRef>123</yRef>  <!-- does not exist -->

Above is an example of 1 Licensee in the xml. The xRef and yRef data does not exist yet. My first idea was to make use of the ASP.NET image library which could overlay a marker for each Licensee onto a world map.

It would read the co-ordinates from xRef/yRef fields - these would actually reflect the positioning of the marker on the image (eg xRef = 0, yRef = 0 means very top left corner of the world map).

The client has requested a 'managed' solution, so that when he adds more licensees to the xml the new licensees will appear on the world map, hence开发者_StackOverflow中文版 why I need to programmatically generate these map markers.

The client is 'ok' with the fact that when he adds a new Licensee he will have trial/error the exact positioning of the marker (pixel offset).

I just wanted to know if anyone else has a better idea before I start working on this. Ideally we would like to avoid flash.

It is quite likely we will dump the xml into a database and provide a front end for the client.

Use google maps.

The following article will help you with that.

http://dotnet.sys-con.com/node/171162