[OpenLayers-Users] Grid-style loading of Markers

[Matt Williamson]

Hello list,

I am looking for a way to load statically stored "tiles" full of marker information, so I can do progressive disclosure of a large point dataset (and I don't have access to Geoserver or similar server-side component). My maps are spherical mercator/Google based, so loading the markers in tiles makes sense.

I found this post on the dev list, which sounds pretty much exactly like what I want to do...

http://openlayers.org/pipermail/dev/2009-January/004222.html

But it was using stuff from the vector behaviors sandbox, which hasn't been touched in a year, it looks like.

So my question is: Is there a standard way to do something like this? From static tile files on the server filesystem (probably GeoJSON format)? I know the "right" answer is to set up a WFS server somewhere, but that's out of the question in the short term. Plus, my point locations change very seldom, so Geoserver would really be overkill anyway.

I was going to try writing my own OpenLayers.Layer.Grid and OpenLayers.Tile subclasses, but I wanted to check if there's an existing way to do this that I've missed, or if the OpenLayers.Strategy.Grid stuff in the vector behaviors sandbox stuff is still a valid way to go.

Thanks!

-Matt