The world is not enough – PTV xServer internet with API Version 2

We can proudly present you our test system for the PTV World City Map Premium 2019.2H with PTV xServer API Version 2.12. This map cluster is special because it is geo-redundant and provides High Performance Routing (HPR) in the Europe part.

Benefits of the new World City Map Cluster

  • Worldwide coverage for API Version 2 geocoding, rendering, routing and distance matrix calculation
  • Minimal latency because of equal deployments in Europe and North America
  • High Performance Routing Networks for the Europe part available

High Performance Routing

  • HPR graphs available for the geographic region Europe (ZZ_EUR)
  • HPR graph available for the following Profiles including the PTV_Truck_Attributes: tuck40t.xml, truck11_99t.xml and truck7_49t.xml
  • Customers who like to use the HPR graphs need to specify some settings in the xServer requests. See paragraph – How to use HPR – in this blog post below.

URL scheme

You can access the PTV xServer internet World City Map Premium cluster with the following url schemes:

Datacenter URLs :
Datacenter Europe https://xserver2-eu-(test).cloud.ptvgroup.com
Datacenter USA https://xserver2-us-(test).cloud.ptvgroup.com

Routed URL: https://xserver2-(test).cloud.ptvgroup.com

Prefer the datacenter url

  • For stateful xServer tasks you need a datacenter url. Stateful tasks are functions that involve multiple requests that need all to be executed on the same datacenter. For PTV xServer internet these are job requests (start/fetchCalculateTour) and all xTour-request, as xTour internally computes distance matrices that are re-used throughout multiple requests.
  • If your application or middleware is at a fixed location. If your application is hosted at the same region (or even the same Azure data center), we recommend specifying url for the according region.

Benefits of the routed URL

  • Improve responsiveness for interactive clients. If an interactive client accesses xServer internet directly, the requests are routed to xServer internet data center with the best latency, dependent on the location of the client. Typical low-latency use cases are mapping, auto-completion geocoding and drag&drop routing.
  • Domain sharding to bypass browser restrictions. The routed url also supports domain-sharding with the url scheme xserver2-(1-4)(-test).cloud.ptvgroup.com. This allows the web browser to open more connections than allowed for a single domain. This practice is typically used in map controls like OpenLayers or Leaflet to load map tiles from as many connections as possible.

How to use HPR

In order to use the HPR networks, the corresponding profile must be used. In addition, the Truck Attributes and HPR must be activated in the request and the geographical restriction ZZ-EUR must be specified for the HPR graph.
HPR graphs were provided for the following profiles:

  • tuck40t.xml + Truck Attributes + geographic restriction ZZ-EUR
  • truck11_99t.xml + Truck Attributes + geographic restriction ZZ-EUR
  • truck7_49t.xml + Truck Attributes + geographic restriction ZZ-EUR

Example request to list the available HPR graphs:

xdata.listHighPerformanceRoutingNetworks():

{
  "$type": "ListHighPerformanceRoutingNetworksRequest",
  "highPerformanceRoutingNetworkOptions": {},
  "resultFields": {
    "highPerformanceRoutingNetworkOptions": true,
    "profiles": true
  }
}

Example request for a routing using a HPR graph:

xroute.calculateRoute():
 
{
  "$type": "RouteRequest",
  "storedProfile": "truck40t",
  "waypoints": [
    {
      "$type": "OffRoadWaypoint",
      "location": {
        "$type": "OffRoadRouteLocation",
        "offRoadCoordinate": {
          "x": 6.22029,
          "y": 49.61513
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "$type": "OffRoadWaypoint",
      "location": {
        "$type": "OffRoadRouteLocation",
        "offRoadCoordinate": {
          "x": 6.06479,
          "y": 49.62127
        }
      }
    }
  ],
  "routeOptions": {
    "routingType": "HIGH_PERFORMANCE_ROUTING",
    "geographicRestrictions": {
      "allowedCountries": [
        "ZZ-EUR"
      ]
    }
  },
  "requestProfile": {
    "featureLayerProfile": {
      "themes": [
        {
          "id": "PTV_TruckAttributes",
          "enabled": true
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Productive system

The productive System is planned for June 3rd 2019.
On this date we will reroute the URL of the actual North/South America and Europe Map Cluster to this new World City Map cluster.

By Isabel Honikel

Senior Technical Product Manager