CartoDB

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CartoDB
Developer(s) Vizzuality
Initial release September 15, 2011
Development status Released
Written in Ruby, Javascript
Type Web development
Website www.cartodb.com

CartoDB is a Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud computing platform that provides GIS and web mapping tools in the browser. CartoDB users can use the Vizzuality provided platform or can deploy their own instance of the open source software. On the hosted version, CartoDB is offered as freemium service, where accounts are free up to a certain size and for larger accounts a fee is applied.[1] It was first released as a Beta version FOSS4G in Denver in September 2011,[2] and came out of preview at Where2.0 in April 2012.[3]

Technology

CartoDB was built on open source software including PostGIS and PostgreSQL. The tool uses JavaScript extensively, including use in the front end web application, back end Node.js based APIs, and for the client libraries.[4] The application is split into four primary components. The first is the web application, where users can manage data and create visualizations. This provides an intuitive GUI to easily generate visualizations, and more advanced users get a web interface to use SQL to manipulate the data and a CSS-style cartography language to control the map's style. Next, is a Maps API that acts as a dynamic tile service, rendering and serving new tiles based on client request. Alongside the Maps API is a SQL API, where PostgreSQL supported SQL statements can be used to retrieve data from the database. The SQL API serves data in JSON, GeoJSON, and CSV data formats. Finally, there is the CartoDB.js library, which can wrap the two APIs into complete visualizations or be used to integrate data into other web applications [5]

Community

CartoDB has a developer community of both users of the hosted software and people deploying their own instances of the software. The community uses primarily a forum, cartodb and the IRC channel #cartodb on freenode. Many members of the community gather at the FOSS4G and FOSS4G-NA annual conferences. Users include NASA,[6] Nokia,[7] and Twitter[8]

See also

Competitors

References

  1. ↑ "Pricing - CartoDB - Account limits". developers.cartodb.com. 2011-10-15. Retrieved 2013-08-01. 
  2. ↑ "FOSS4G 2011 Program". FOSS4G. 2011-10-15. Retrieved 2013-08-01. 
  3. ↑ "Where2.0 2012 Program". O'Reilly. 2012-04-02. Retrieved 2013-08-01. 
  4. ↑ "CartoDB Code Repository". developers.cartodb.com. 2011-10-15. Retrieved 2013-08-01. 
  5. ↑ "CartoDB.js Code Repository". developers.cartodb.com. 2011-10-15. Retrieved 2013-08-01. 
  6. ↑ "CartoDB Aims To Be The Instagram Of Maps". idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com. 2012-11-30. Retrieved 2013-08-01. 
  7. ↑ "Can you predict future traffic patterns? Nokia thinks it can". gigaom.com. 2013-07-02. Retrieved 2013-08-01. 
  8. ↑ "The NBA Finals visualized". blog.twitter.com. 2013-07-09. Retrieved 2013-08-01. 
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