Can Azure Maps API results be stored indefinitely?

Question

If the Azure Maps API is used to convert two addresses to latitude/longitude coordinates and then calculate the distance between those coordinates for a list of records in a Power BI table, is it permissible to store this information in a Power BI dataset and report indefinitely? After data is exported to Excel from a Power BI report containing Azure Maps API results, is it permissible to store those exports indefinitely?

Do the same rules apply to the Bing Maps API?

Answer 1

No. Each REST API will have an expiration period in the result header. That is the maximum amount of time you can cache the result.

Answer 2

If you calculated the straight-line distance between the coordinates, you can store that indefinitely.

The lat/lon information could be stored in Azure for continual access as long as you have an active Azure account as per the terms of service here: https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/terms/en-US/productoffering/MicrosoftAzure/MCA (do a search on the page for maps, its about halfway down the page). This is what the terms currently say (July 2024):

Caching and storing Results is permitted where the purpose of caching is to reduce latency times of Customer Solution. Results may not be stored for longer than: (i) the validity period indicated in returned headers; or (ii) 6 months, whichever is the shorter. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Customer may retain continual access to geocodes as long as Customer maintains an active Azure account.

As you can see, the terms call out geocode results as the only result allowed for continual access. If in your scenario you are calculating the distance using the routing service (road based distance), if you look at the response header from the routing request there is one max-age value of 31536000 seconds (365 days), so, as per the terms, 6 months would be the max time that data from the routing service could be stored.

All that said, since this is a legal question and based on a legal document, it's best to confirm your understanding of the terms with your legal counsel if you are unsure.