Also, styling can be applied later in the process, or even in the browser itself, allowing much greater flexibility in how data is presented.
It is also easy to provide interactivity with map features, as their vector representation already exists within the client.
[2] Yet another benefit is that less centralised server processing power is required, since rasterisation can be performed directly in the client.
A very early GIS (circa 1966), the Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS), used a vector tile storage scheme that allowed limited resource computers to efficiently access and process vector map data.
WAMS is described in detail in “The wetlands analytical mapping system: WAMS" [Pywell and Niedzwiadek, 1980] Building on the operational experience gained in implementing and using WAMS as well as from the Map Overlay and Statistical System (MOSS),[5] in 1986 Autometric released a UNIX based commercial GIS that implemented an enhanced tiled and indexed storage and access structure: DeltaMap (later GenaMap).
In the late 1980s, Genasys further enhanced GenaMap to allow "Continuous, seamless" processing of the tiled layers.
Mapbox has defined an open standard for vector map tiles called "vector-tile-spec" which uses Google protocol buffers for space-efficient data serialisation.
[8] In March 2015, Esri, the dominant geospatial software maker, announced that they would be supporting Mapbox's vector tiles standard in both server and client platforms.
[10] The approach followed by TileStache is to allow multiple data serialisation formats; as of early 2015, it supports GeoJSON, ArcJSON, GeoBSON, Arc GeoServices BSON, GeoAMF and Arc GeoServices BSON.
[15] The tile server pipeline TileStache supports several flavours of JSON natively.
PGRestAPI (also known as Chubbs Spatial Server) is a standalone NodeJS server which can also generate vector tiles on the fly from a PostGIS data source, as well as serving pre-generated vector tiles from sources such as Mapbox Studio.