Using map data in program logic

Hi guys,

First of all, thanks to everybody developing and contributing to this cool project.

I have two questions regarding to use map in our final project for university, appreciate if you make me clear on those questions:

1-) We need to model public transportation in a city by adding bus stops and routes on map as point(or set of points for routes). How can we talk with map from the program we implement? In other words, we have a route named 515 and it’s marked on the map as set of points and a bus stop, BSx, is also marked on the map. In this case, how can we understand whether or not our operating bus(a point on the route) is about to reach to the BSx?

2-) Do we need to store points mentioned above(for bus stops and routes) in our database designed for our project or, instead, is it enough to specify all bus stops as names like BS1, BS2 etc. and ask to the map something like “find the distance between bus operating and BS1”. We’re using OpenStreetMap with OpenLayers API.

Thanks in advance
Gokhan Ozbulak