Method of and system for defining a service for serving map images

A processing system coupled via a network to a client processing system and coupled to a display device, the processing system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• a storage subsystem comprising one or more non-transitory storage devices,
• the processing system coupled to a map service repository that maintains surveys,
• the storage subsystem including program instructions that when executed cause the processing system to operate as a map service server for a map service, including to carry out:
• receiving from the client processing system an API determined at a the map service server or at another processing system, the API being for a set of one or more areas, the set defined by a user, each area having an associated area of interest (“AOI”) and one or more associated dates,
• querying AOIs and associated date ranges maintained in the map service repository, the querying including, for each AOI, starting with a first AOI and continuing with the next AOI until all AOIs have been queried, finding surveys in the map service depository that intersect with said each AOI and that have dates within said AOI's associated date range, and
• generating and sending to the client processing system metadata that provides one or more respective map-display APIs for one or more respective areas in the set such that using any one of the provided respective map-display APIs obtains map imagery of the respective area of the one map-display API on the display device,
• wherein the client processing system acts as a map service client for the map service, and
• wherein said finding surveys causes the generated and sent metadata to be automatically updated by taking into account any new surveys made available in the service repository prior to the generating of the metadata.

A non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising instructions for a processing system for a map service, the processing system coupled via a network to a client processing system and to a display device, the processing system of the map service further coupled to a map service repository that maintains surveys, the instructions when executed cause carrying out a method comprising:

• receiving from the client processing system an API determined at the map service processing system or at a second processing system, the API being for a set of one or more areas, the set defined by a user, each area having an associated area of interest (“AOI”) and one or more associated dates,
• querying AOIs and associated date ranges maintained in the map service repository, the querying including, for each area of the API, and for each AOI of said each area of the API, starting with a first AOI and continuing with the next AOI until all AOIs of all areas have been queried, finding surveys in the map service depository that intersect with the AOI and that have dates within the AOI's associated date range of each area, and
• generating and sending to the client processing system metadata that provides one or more respective map-display APIs for one or more respective areas in the set such that using any one of the provided respective map-display APIs obtains map imagery of the respective area of the one map-display API on the display device,
• wherein the client processing system acts as a map service client for the map service, and
• wherein said finding surveys causes the generated and sent metadata to be automatically updated by taking into account any new surveys made available in the service repository prior to the querying of the AOIs and associated date ranges.