So why would anyone want to put alot of data into a browser? Well, for a lot of the same reasons that edge computing and distributed computing have become so popular.
You get the data a lot closer to the user and you don’t have to pay for the compute 😉
… this sounds great but as I found out during this conversation it’s not as easy as it might seem!
There are a lot of trade-offs that need to be evaluated when moving data and analytics to the client.
Nick Rabinowitz Senior Staff Software Engineer at Foursquare has a ton of experience with this so he volunteered his time to help us understand more about it.
https://location.foursquare.com/
https://studio.foursquare.com/home
If you are not familiar with the Arrow data format it might be worth checking out
Apache Arrow defines a language-independent columnar memory format for flat and hierarchical data, organized for efficient analytic operations on modern hardware like CPUs and GPUs. The Arrow memory format also supports zero-copy reads for lightning-fast data access without serialization overhead
Related podcast episodes that you might find interesting include
H3 grid system
https://mapscaping.com/podcast/h3-geospatial-indexing-system/
The H3 geospatial indexing system is a discrete global grid system consisting of a multi-precision hexagonal tiling of the sphere with hierarchical indexes. H3 is a really interesting approach to tiling data that was developed by UBER and has been open-sourced.
Hex Tiles
https://mapscaping.com/podcast/hex-tiles/
If you have not heard of the H3 grid system before listen to that episode first before listening to this one it will add a lot of useful context!
Spatial Knowledge Graphs
https://mapscaping.com/podcast/spatial-knowledge-graphs/
Foursquare is moving away from spatial joins and focusing on building a knowledge graph. If you are not familiar with graphs this might be a good place to start, also its interesting to hear the reasons for the move from spatial joins to another data structure.
Distribution Geospatial Data
https://mapscaping.com/podcast/distributing-geospatial-data/
This is interesting if you want to understand more about distributed databases and some of the strategies for doing this. It sounds complicated but this episode is a really good introduction!
Cloud Native Geospatial
https://mapscaping.com/podcast/cloud-native-geospatial/
This episode give a solid overview of what cloud-native means and some of the current geospatial cloud native formats out there today
I am constantly thinking about how I can make this podcast better for you so if you have any ideas or suggestions please let me know!
Also, I am thinking of recording a behind-the-scenes episode, is that something you might be interested in? if so what questions do you have?
