The final frontier (part 3 of the Dynamic Tiling saga)

Previously I spoke about the Dynamic Tile Service and how it creates tile images in real-time; its ability to easily create custom styles and colours for maps; and, its ability to tile point and polygon data sets.

In this post I will be talking about how the Dynamic Tile Service can further solve Big Data problems by allowing users to view thousands of interactive features such as pop-ups showing point detail instantly when the browser loads using the UTFGrid JSON web service.

As we have previously stated, viewing Big Data on a map brings a unique set of challenges to web based applications as browsers cannot process massive data sets all at once, instantly. This leaves users waiting for information to load and is probably contributing to the bounce rate of many web-based map applications.

Digital mapping’s dynamic makeover (part 1 of the Dynamic Tiling saga)

Over the coming weeks I’ll be talking about a new platform we’re calling the Dynamic Tile Service which delivers our high quality map tiles – in a jiffy.

As its name suggests, the Dynamic Tile Service creates map image tiles at the time when they are requested (dynamically) – rather than returning them from a pre-built cache of tile images. This has allowed us to add some pretty nifty features including the ability to support:

• Custom styles;
• Custom datasets; and,
• A detailed view of thousands of map features right in the browser – instantly.

So what does all this really mean? Well, I’ll break it down for you.