Map Tiles: Everything You Need To Know

Visualizing geospatial data is complex due to high zoom scales, browser limitations, and the need for databases. Map tiles are used to efficiently visualize such data by breaking maps into smaller parts and compressing them. The most commonly used tools for creating map tiles are Mapbox or Google Maps with tippecanoe. However, these solutions have limitations in handling changing data and large tile files. CARTO offers an alternative solution that works directly within databases and data warehouses, allowing users to create tilesets without writing code. It supports three methods of visualization: raw GeoJSON, dynamic tiles, and pregenerated tiles. Additionally, CARTO now supports native tiles with spatial indexes like H3 and Quadbins for faster rendering and query times.