While developing a routing engine for a journey planner solution on top of Ordnance Survey mapping data, we faced several challenges and limitations. Here are some of them:
Responses from server when dragging the map:
- Problem: When you drag and drop map too fast, the client application sends many requests to the server so the sequence of responses from the server may be not in a correct order of the initial request. That may cause incorrect routes on the map.
- Solution: Use a flag to ensure that the server is responding, so the next request will be sent to the server and stay in a queue waiting to be processed.
Custom data of busy roads:
- Problem: With busy roads data from data.gov.uk, each part of a road has its own busy information, so if a road has 100 parts, 100 busy icons will be displayed on a short road. This will make data reflection slow and uncomfortable.
- Solution: Calculate the distance between continuous parts on a road within a maximum distance and show only center points.
Bespoke mapping data:
- Problem: Using Ordnance Survey API you are limited in customization of the view of the mapping data. Ordnance Survey Pro partially solves that, however, implies additional annual costs and is not flexible in terms of customization.
- Solution: Install Ordnance Survey mapping locally with the use of GeoServer to enable drawing layers created using the ArcGIS and be able to replace legacy tiles with custom ones.