All things spatial: Ingenuity of Google Map architecture also its main limitation
Ingenuity of Google Map architecture also its main limitation
When Google Map was first revealed to the world many in GIS industry were stunned how simple to use, fast and good looking it was. Such result was possible only because of ingenuity of Google map creators.
The traditional way to publish maps over the Internet was to use specialised mapping servers to render GIS data into a simple image and then to serve that single image to a browser for display. A new map was generated every time users panned to a different location or changed zoom level (since there is an infinite number of combinations of map extents and zoom levels it was impossible to generate those maps in advance). And those maps were always less than perfect because every display rule had to be predefined for the entire map and for every possible zoom level. In case of very detailed maps the complexity of defining those rules was very often beyond the capacity of map creators.
The traditional way to publish maps over the Internet was to use specialised mapping servers to render GIS data into a simple image and then to serve that single image to a browser for display. A new map was generated every time users panned to a different location or changed zoom level (since there is an infinite number of combinations of map extents and zoom levels it was impossible to generate those maps in advance). And those maps were always less than perfect because every display rule had to be predefined for the entire map and for every possible zoom level. In case of very detailed maps the complexity of defining those rules was very often beyond the capacity of map creators.
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