[webmap-discuss] OGC and google style tiling

Paul Spencer pspencer at dmsolutions.ca
Thu Apr 27 08:03:24 EDT 2006


Steven

there are a couple of very good reasons for this (in my opinion).   
The approach you suggest is actually the first one I tried because I  
was focussing on the client side code at the time.  It became obvious  
that it would not actually work in a real world situation because:

1) every request to mapserv starts the CGI, loads the map, renders  
the map and returns it.  This takes a substantial amount of time,  
even if your map file and data are highly optimized.  For instance,  
my test cases would take about 1-2 seconds per tile, with a HUGE load  
on the server.

2) every request to mapserv is treated as a single map draw.  This  
means that all label locations are calculated for that tile only.  In  
many cases, labels are too big to fit on a single tile.  In others,  
you have a label that fills the tile and because the feature extends  
across multiple tiles, you may get the identical label repeated next  
to each other many times.

3) mapserv has rendering issues that are difficult to detect when  
rendering a single image, but when you render tiles, they become very  
obvious.  The worst is thick lines rendered with a 'circle' symbol,  
the ends of the line (at the map draw boundary) are tailed off ...  
when two tiles come together, there is a very noticeable 'shearing'  
effect on the lines which looks very bad.

4) it is not possible to modify the headers returned from the cgi,  
which means that you get the default browser caching behaviour.  In  
many cases, tiles can be cached for a long time, and in some specific  
cases you want no caching at all.

5) I wanted to have some way of providing the capability to switch  
between maps.  This requires some knowledge of what maps are  
available on the server.  There is no way to do this with the CGI

6) in ka-Map (as with Google), you are restricted to a specific set  
of scales for viewing the map.  This is not strictly necessary if you  
are not caching the tiles, but in the case of cached tiles it does  
become very important.  Cartographically, this means you can build  
your map file for very specific scale breaks and ensure that the map  
looks exactly right at each of the scales.  Using just the cgi, it  
would be impossible to determine the intended scale breaks for a  
given map.

On a related note, however, if you wanted to try this anyway there is  
a wmsLayer type in kaMap that can be used to create layers based on  
remote WMS sources on the fly.  It would be a useful exercise to  
remove the server-side dependency in ka-Map's initialization step and  
only trigger it on demand so that an 'empty' map could be created to  
which you could add some number of wms layers.  This would be a very  
good fit as it would remove the server-side dependency and, as  
MapBuilder is already very ogc-aware, it would be easy to integrate.

I may be willing to invest some effort in getting this to work at  
some point, especially if there is some interest/cooperation from the  
MapBuilder community (which has already been offered btw, thanks Mike  
and Cameron)

Cheers

Paul

On 27-Apr-06, at 4:32 AM, Steven M. Ottens wrote:

> Hi Paul,
>
> Why did you choose to use a php script to handle tiling? It makes it
> much harder for ka-map to become a general webmapping client,  
> currently
> it is strongly tied to mapserver. Also for me it's more difficult to
> integrate it with mapbuilder, if I want to keep mapbuilder general.
> Why not integrate the routine in the clientside and request tiles  
> like this:
> http://www.edugis.nl/cgi-bin/edugis/mapserv.cgi?map=maps/edugis/ 
> base.map&VERSION=1.1.0&REQUEST=GetMap&LAYERS=topografie&STYLES=default 
> &SRS=EPSG: 
> 4326&BBOX=4.833984375,52.26815737376817,4.921875,52.32191088594773&WID 
> TH=256&HEIGHT=256&FORMAT=image/png&TRANSPARENT=TRUE&EXCEPTIONS=INIMAGE
> (this is a request from a gmap-based application)
> The important part, obviously, to make sure that the tiles have the  
> same
> size (easy) and the same coordinates regardless of the client.
>
>
> grt,
> Steven
>
>
>
> Paul Spencer wrote:
>> Ok.  I'm not sure if the URLs to the tiles are standard.  The URL  
>> goes
>> to a tile.php script which converts special pixel coordinates into
>> geographic coordinates.  The math for the conversion is very simple
>> though, all you need to know is the size of a pixel in geographic
>> coordinates.
>>
>> I'll need to look into mapbuilders controls to understand how to do
>> the integration.  Perhaps this could be the start of a common API? ;)
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> On 13-Apr-06, at 11:33 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
>>
>>> The "standard URL" I was refering to is the URL of a tile.
>>>
>>> Both ka-map and mapbuilder have both implemented much of the same
>>> functionality.  We will need to work out a logical place to split
>>> between the ka-map code and the mapbuilder code.
>>>
>>> I think it would be difficult to use Mapbuilder without Mapbuilder
>>> controls.  Probably what we would need to do is convert your ka-map
>>> tools to fit within the Mapbuilder framework.
>>>
>>> Paul Spencer wrote:
>>>> Cameron,
>>>> what do you mean by standard url?  ka-Map has a javascript API that
>>>> handles all the navigation including the smooth panning of the
>>>> map.   While not exactly like google, the api is roughly  
>>>> equivalent.
>>>> Not sure if you could use mapbuilder's controls or not, it would be
>>>> cool if you could.
>>>> I'll take a stab at installing/running MapBuilder this weekend.  Do
>>>> I  need to do anything special to use the Google Map layer?
>>>> Cheers
>>>> Paul
>>>> On 13-Apr-06, at 6:26 AM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
>>>>> Paul,
>>>>> I'm currently allowing a Google Map layer to be included as one of
>>>>> the layers rendered by Mapbuilder.
>>>>>
>>>>> So if you have a standard URL used to call a tiled map server,
>>>>> then  we can create a Mapbuilder Layer which accesses the URL
>>>>> (we'd  probably base our code on your existing ka-maps code).
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd expect that we would use the Mapbuilder pan/zoom type tools
>>>>> and  buttons rather than the ka-map tools.
>>>>>
>>>>> Is that what you were thinking about?
>>>>>
>>>>> Paul Spencer wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> What would be really nice would be to have a MapBuilder widget
>>>>>> for  ka- Map ;)  Mike Adair has mentioned that this is both
>>>>>> possible  and quite  easy to do.  Not being very familiar with
>>>>>> MapBuilder, I  can't comment  on that.  But if it were  
>>>>>> possible to
>>>>>> do, ka-Map  would provide you a  tiled interface and you could  
>>>>>> use
>>>>>> your  existing map file to do it  without breaking ogc  
>>>>>> compatibility.
>>>>>> Cheers
>>>>>> Paul
>>>>>> On 12-Apr-06, at 4:33 AM, Steven M. Ottens wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Bart,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks for the mailinglist tip.
>>>>>>> It might be possible to rasterize our vector data, but we've got
>>>>>>> quite
>>>>>>> some datasets and there will be more of them. It also makes  
>>>>>>> us less
>>>>>>> flexible. Obviously we've to make a trade-off on flexibility
>>>>>>> and   speed.
>>>>>>> We hope that with cached tiles we can have both the  
>>>>>>> flexibility and
>>>>>>> speed. If we rasterise it would make sense to rasterise into
>>>>>>> fixed  tiles
>>>>>>> I guess.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Steven
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi Steven,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> there is an OGC list to discuss tiling:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> http://lists.eogeo.org/mailman/listinfo/tiling
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> check the archives there.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> What you could also do, since I assume your data is pretty
>>>>>>>> much   static, is
>>>>>>>> use UMN Mapserver to rasterize all your vector data (create
>>>>>>>> Geotiffs e.g.)
>>>>>>>> and serve out the rasters instead. I guess the classifications
>>>>>>>> used are
>>>>>>>> heavy on CPU usage, and pre-classified rasters would solve
>>>>>>>> that   part at
>>>>>>>> least.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>>>>> Bart
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> For those who don't know: I'm one of the lead developers on
>>>>>>>>> the  EduGIS
>>>>>>>>> project, a site which aims to introduce highschool students
>>>>>>>>> to   GIS. The
>>>>>>>>> site contains a webmapping part, which combined with so called
>>>>>>>>> 'lesson-modules' can be used inside the classroom.
>>>>>>>>> We aim to be able to have at least 200 students access the
>>>>>>>>> site  at one
>>>>>>>>> time. Since it's being used inside the classroom it means that
>>>>>>>>> a  lot of
>>>>>>>>> students will do more or less the same thing at the same time
>>>>>>>>> (following
>>>>>>>>> the tasks in the lesson-modules). This causes quite some
>>>>>>>>> stress  on the
>>>>>>>>> server. Since it's a free site we have limited budget and
>>>>>>>>> cannot  put a
>>>>>>>>> google-style server park behind it ;(
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Right now we've got apache to serverside cache the umn
>>>>>>>>> mapserver  output.
>>>>>>>>> This obviously works only for those images that are requested
>>>>>>>>> twice
>>>>>>>>> (like the first mapimage). Right now about 30 students can
>>>>>>>>> work  at the
>>>>>>>>> same time without it becoming unworkable slow. Since
>>>>>>>>> serverside  caching
>>>>>>>>> works, the next logical step to boost performance would be
>>>>>>>>> using  tiles
>>>>>>>>> like google.
>>>>>>>>> But..
>>>>>>>>> From what I know, tiling breaks OGC compatibility, right?
>>>>>>>>> We're using Mapbuilder as client and we prefer to keep using
>>>>>>>>> it,  since
>>>>>>>>> it's turning into a rather featureful client on the EduGIS
>>>>>>>>> site.  But the
>>>>>>>>> question arises how to implement tiling inside
>>>>>>>>> WMC/OWS-context   without
>>>>>>>>> breaking OGC too much.
>>>>>>>>> Also I'm interested in the used algorithms to get tiling  
>>>>>>>>> working.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>>>>> Steven
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------- 
>>>>>>>>> ----
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>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>> +---------------------------------------------------------------- 
>>>>>> -+
>>>>>> |Paul Spencer                            
>>>>>> pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
>>>>>> +---------------------------------------------------------------- 
>>>>>> -+
>>>>>> |Applications & Software  
>>>>>> Development                              |
>>>>>> |DM Solutions Group Inc                 http:// 
>>>>>> www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --Cameron Shorter
>>>>> http://cameron.shorter.net
>>>>>
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>>>>> ---
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>>>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>>>> |Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
>>>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>>>> |Applications & Software Development                              |
>>>> |DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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>>>
>>> --Cameron Shorter
>>> http://cameron.shorter.net
>>>
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>> |Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>> |Applications & Software Development                              |
>> |DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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