Does OpenLayers 3 load Bing tiles non-billable

Question

I'm trying to understand the methodology used for loading Bing map tiles in order to maximize my license.

From Bing documentation...

"An important thing to understand when it comes to what causes billable vs. non-billable transactions is whether the API call was done within a Bing Maps ‘session’. A session begins anytime the Bing Maps AJAX Control, Bing Maps Silverlight Control, Bing Maps WPF Control or Bing Maps Windows Phone Control is loaded. For example, if you were to first load any of these Map Controls, then subsequently call the Bing Maps REST Locations API (i.e. to geocode a location), that REST Locations API call would generate a non-billable transaction. This is because the REST Locations API call was done within the Map Control session."

So I guess the real question is does OL3 follow these rules? and if not is there a way to enforce them before OL3 makes a call to the Bing API?

Answer 1

OpenLayers 3 does align with the Bing Maps terms of use. It requires a Bing Maps key to be specified. Every time the map is loaded it uses the key to call the Bing Maps Imagery metadata service to get the tile URL. This serves two purposes, the first is that it is used to create a transaction to account for the usage of the map tiles, the second is that it ensures the latest tile URLs are used as they do change from time to time. However, OpenLayers does not generate a map session which can be used with other Bing Maps services to make those calls non-billable. Map sessions are only available in the official Bing Maps map controls and are there as an incentive to use those controls. This makes no difference for map tiles, but would mean the geocoding/routing and similar type requests to the Bing Maps REST services would be billable.