Google Maps Fusion Tables feasibility

Question

I am wondering if someone can provide some insight about an approach for google maps. Currently I am developing a visualization with google maps api v3. This visualization will map out polygons for; country, state, zip code, cities, etc. As well as map 3 other markers(balloon, circle..). This data is dynamically driven by an underlying report which can have filters applied and can be drilled to many levels. The biggest problem I am running into is dynamically rendering the polygons. The data necessary to generate a polygon with Google Maps V3 is large. It also requires a good deal of processing at runtime.

My thought is that since my visualization will never allow the user to return very large data sets(all zip codes for USA). I could employ the use of dynamically created fusion tables.

Lets say for each run my report will return 50 states or 50 zip codes. Users can drill from state>zip.

The first run of the visualization users will run a report ad it will return the state name and 4 metrics. Would it be possible to dynamically create a fusion table based on this information? Would I be able to pass through 4 metrics and formatting for all of the different markers to be drawn on the map?

The second run the user will drill from state to zip code. The report will then return 50 zip codes and 4 metrics. Could the initial table be dropped and another table be created to map a map with the same requirements as above? Providing the fusion tables zip code(22054, 55678....) and 4 metric values and formatting.

Sorry for being long winded. Even after reading the fusion table documentation I am not 100% certain on this.

Answer 1

Fully-hosted solution

If you can upload the full dataset and get Google to do the drill-down, you could check out the Google Maps Engine platform. It's built to handle big sets of geospatial data, so you don't have to do the heavy lifting.

Product page is here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/enterprise/mapsearth/products/mapsengine.html

API doco here: https://developers.google.com/maps-engine/

Details on hooking your data up with the normal Maps API here: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/mapsenginelayers

Dynamic hosted solution

However, since you want to do this dynamically it's a little trickier. Neither the Fusion Tables API nor the Maps Engine API at this point in time support table creation via their APIs, so your best option is to model your data in a consistent schema so you can create your table (in either platform) ahead of time and use the API to upload & delete data on demand.

For example, you could create a table in MapsEngine ahead of time for each drill-down level (e.g. one for state, one for zip-code) & use the batchInsert method to add data at run-time.

If you prefer Fusion Tables, you can use insert or importRows.

Client-side solution

The above solutions are fairly complex & you may be better off generating your shapes using the Maps v3 API drawing features (e.g. simple polygons).

If your data mapping is quite complex, you may find it easier to bind your data to a Google Map using D3.js. There's a good example here. Unfortunately, this does mean investigating yet another API.