(This page describes a stand-alone product component. See our OpenImageMap Imagery Tiling Platform for a complete turnkey solution.)
Overview
Since its introduction almost ten years ago, the Open GIS Consortium’s WMS (Web Map Server) specification continues to be one of the most successful of the OGC standards, with hundreds of different implementations in use across the Internet. The protocol allows clients to request maps in many different styles, sizes, projections and image formats. However this flexibility comes at the price of performance and scalability. Each map requested must be rendered by the server at considerable cost in processing power and time.
A faster, more scalable Web Map Service
To address this issue, CubeWerx offers a Web Map Tile Service (WMTS). This service, now an OGC standard, works by subdividing the map space into a set of pre-generated image files (tiles), which can then be rapidly returned to a client application, instead of creating a new map for each request. Google Maps is the most well-known example of such a service, however the CubeWerx solution achieves the same performance characteristics using non-proprietary technology. The service supports both a traditional web service interface as well as a REST option, allowing it to be easily integrated into a wide array of Web 2.0 applications. An intelligent tile generation and caching mechanism minimizes storage requirements by creating tiles on-demand, and caching them for subsequent requests, so only those tiles which users actually ask for exist on physical storage.
The tile creation process is backed by CubeWerx’ comprehensive image processing and symbology engines, allowing tiles to be created using OGC Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) documents. Multiple tile sets may be created from the same data, to respond to different symbology or map projection requirements.
Key Features
