The folks over at Soul Solutions published an article (Encoding for performance, Soul Solutions) outlining the steps for implementing an “Encoded Polyline Algorithm Format” (Encoded Polyline Algorithm Format, Google) - an algorithm for reducing the data overheads when sending long lists of coordinates over a network.

I have been aware of this for a while, but - unfortunately - have not had the opportunity to put it into practice. The duo over at Soul Solutions work primarily with Virtual Earth (Microsoft’s on-line mapping system), so tend to focus on loading speed and ensuring things are as snappy as possible. My scenario was a little different; generating KML files of hundreds of polygons based on geographical boundaries.

Read the rest of this entry »