Mission-critical mapping applications typically contain a detailed geographic map, overlaid with custom graphic objects that represent the assets of the underlying system, such as buildings, vehicles, equipment or troops. In such applications, the custom graphic objects are the critical ingredients, and the maps stay in the background to simply provide geographic context to them.

Defining the map for such an application can be tedious, because map data is often very large, stored in various formats and parameters, with a visual appearance that must be adapted to each case. Developers who create background maps may want to experiment with many different combinations of map data and appearances. ILOG JViews Maps provides a point-and-click editing tool—Map Builder—to make the creation of background maps straightforward

Typical background map assembled in the Map Builder. Enlarge image (opens a new window).

Defining a Background map
Map Builder provides all the necessary services to import map data, define its appearance for various zoom levels and arrange it alongside other map data. It manages the data in separate physical layers and allows developers to customize the attributes of each layer. The end result is a map definition file loaded by the runtime application as the background map.

Key features:

• Imports map data from a wide variety of formats and projections
• Combines data on different layers, mixing both vector and raster data sets
• Specifies the map data’s look and feel, such as the width of a road, or the colors used to depict altitude information
• Controls the visibility and appearance of the layers, depending on the desired zoom level.This enables the display of meaningful information according to the operational context
• Automates tiling and load on demand of map data for efficient large data set handling
• Defines the working projection, the units of measurement, and the latitude/longitude coordinate formatters
• Defines Ajax Web deployment options, such as the tiling options for Google Maps-like behavior in browsers
• Defines areas of interest to allow end-users to easily navigate between hot spots

Maps at Runtime
Typically, a map application built with ILOG JViews Maps will use the map definition file produced by Map Builder .This map definition file can either point to (reference) original data stores (to avoid data duplication) or include (copy) all of the map data when the application will be deployed with little or no connectivity to the original data stores.

Some mapping applications need different maps for different uses, and Map Builder can help here too. For example, it can be used to easily produce one background map for a customer in Canada, and another for an Australian customer.

Use of the Map Builder is not mandatory. Customers can programmatically input map data dynamically using the ILOG JViews Maps advanced programming interface (API), or combine use of the API with the use of the Map Builder map definition files.

More than just a tool
Map Builder features a powerful set of services that are commonly used in most mapping applications. Because of this, the source code for Map Builder (which is itself made from the map's software development kit) is also provided, allowing developers to reuse large sections of its code for their own projects.