[OSM-dev] all things to all people
Richard Fairhurst
richard at systemeD.net
Tue Apr 22 15:48:27 BST 2008
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
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