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.