What are the performance and scalability goals for the Virtual Earth platform?
A. One of the design goals of the Virtual Earth platform is to deliver exceptional performance and scalability. For operations planning purposes and for problem identification and resolution, Microsoft’s response times are closely monitored. Virtual Earth serves a range of applications, including Windows Live Local and other Microsoft properties, which alone already generate millions of transactions per day with very high performance. The end-user perception of the overall solution’s performance rests on a combination of the programmable, XML-based service and the user interface solution being built. Microsoft provides extensive sample code and best practices to ensure optimal end-to-end performance for customers’ end users.
