By adding some formality to what people have been doing for years with XYZ tilesets, the OGC API - Tiles Standard builds on the legacy of tiled maps . The Standard also specifies metadata elements that help clients do a better job at creating maps. This includes basic information such as a title or description, but also the available zoom levels, maximum x and y coordinates and even a custom map projection.

The OGC API - Tiles Standard describes how mapping clients (e.g.: web pages, desktop applications) can get information about tilesets and how to request the tiled data itself. Like the TileJSON specification, implementations of the OCG API - Tiles Standard provides a way to describe tilesets available on a server. At the same time, it supports more use cases, such as serving data which is not projected in Google Mercator. Unlike the OGC Web Map Tiling Service Standard (WMTS) , the Tiles API specifies the use of JSON instead of XML and is organized in a series of building blocks that can be easily integrated into other applications. These building blocks are mapped to conformance classes. One may choose to conform to one or more conformance classes, according to the complexity of the use case and the aimed degree of interoperability.
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