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The future of web mapping
The web mapping offers a major advancement in cartography and opens many new opportunities. Previously, geogrpahic information system (GIS) was restricted to experts using specialized applications. Now, the Web mapping provides opportunities to have realtime maps, cheaper dissemination, more frequent and cheaper updates of data and software, personalized map content, distributed data sources and sharing of geographic information. But what is the future trends of web mapping?
The web mapping can be categorized using different aspects, but essentially the objective is to provide access to geographic maps via the web. Nothing surprising! There are numerous technologies emerging which provide maps over the web depending the kind of map to diffuse. We can describe the current tends of web mapping as the raster one. All users around the world use well-known technologies such as WMS, or TileServer developed now by many companies and communities (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, MapServer, GeoServer, MapGuide, ESRI ArcGIS Server etc. ...). But the static raster map has some limitations: it reduce the interactivity level, the map customization, the rendering quality and the number of information available.
The maps combining both a vector and raster display begin to emerge. In the context of the Web 2.0 and collaborative maps (OpenStreetMap, Navteq, MapShare, etc ...) the availability of data vector makes sense. Users want to interact with the map, i.e. see the meta-data and edit the geographic features. They want the speed of a tile server combined with the flexibility of a WMS server. They want improved user experience, without waiting, without empty boxes during handling maps. Streaming maps combining vector and raster data can answer these expectations.
Obviously, vector streaming technology exists (WFS, KML) but are still not very popular and does not meet requirements in terms of amount of data displayed and performance. So, why not reuse the idea of the TileServer, which is able to stream raster efficiently, in the context of a vector streaming technology. The idea is to create a hierarchy and a set of tiles for each data vector layer. These tiles are stored in a cache and can then be diffused very effectively to a client via the web.
Currently, all products which provide a "Vector TileServer" technology propose different solutions for streaming with proprietary clients. It's normal since there is still no standards describing the Vector Tile Map Service. Currently, Navteq and Idevio provides a Java client to access their "vector tile server". Nokia OVI Contour Maps and NSim provides a plugin in the browser while other companies use the plugin Adobe Flash in the browser. Some proprietary clients are also available to stream data vector: Google Earth, Google Turn by turn directions, 3D Bing, Blackberry Map.
The race for the data vector streaming is started. Does the webmapping of tomorrow will combine vector and raster data framed by a general standard? In my opinion, yes and you, what do you think?