[OSM-dev] all things to all people

[Richard Fairhurst]

SteveC wrote:

> Thats not the point, its not about x number of CPU seconds per request
> - its that the statistics are fundamentally different for, say,
> running a WMS and running a tile server. One scales, one doesn't.

But IMHO the export tab isn't really like running a WMS. A WMS is  
basically an API - it's typically accessed programmatically, so  
someone writes and distributes a client which hammers it and hey  
presto you have a server load problem. The export tab isn't an API,  
it's a human-facing service, so the load scales reasonably  
predictably in proportion to userbase/project visibility.

We may of course have a problem one day if someone tries to treat it  
as an API, but as Tom says the stats don't suggest that's happening  
now, and blocking repeated requests from the same IP would be pretty  
trivial.

Anyway, whatever.


I did a bit of wiki gardening earlier to group the rest of the  
exporty type stuff on one page - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ 
index.php/Export - which, bearing in mind Andy A's comment about  
prebuilt Garmin downloads earlier, might make a useful 'Other  
formats...' link at the bottom of the export tab.

cheers
Richard