In this chapter, we have implemented, tested, and made improvements to a simple web-based application that displays shorelines, towns, and lakes within a given radius of a starting point. This application was the impetus for exploring a number of important concepts within geo-spatial application development, including:
The creation of a simple, but complete web-based geo-spatial application.
Using databases to store and work with large amounts of geo-spatial data.
Using a "black-box" map rendering module to create maps using spatial data selected from a database.
Examining the issues involved in identifying features based on their true distance rather than using a lat/long approximation.
Learning how to use spatial joins effectively.
Exploring usability issues in a prototype implementation.
Dealing with issues of data quality.
Learning how to pre-calculate data to improve performance.
Exploring how a geo-spatial application might be scaled to handle vast numbers of users and requests.
As a...