Many have called data the oil of the modern world. This is especially true in the field of navigation and map development, the focus area of the NDS Association, and reason enough to take a closer look at the question: What exactly does the data structure in NDS.Live look like? And what exactly are the data layers all about?
NDS.Live specifies different data layer properties
For a better classification: According to experts, the volume of data created and replicated in 2027 is expected to be around 284 zettabytes. Clear structures, uniform standards, and procedures, such as those NDS offers, are becoming increasingly important. NDS.Live uses data layers for a horizontal separation of use cases, while data containers and tiles are used to constrain the spatial extent of the data.
Data lifetime on the other hand is a property of a data layer. It describes the expected lifetime of the data within the data layer.
NDS.Live specifies the following types of data lifetime:
NDS.Live map data is organized in layers. Each data layer focuses on a certain use case and is defined in a specific NDS.Live module. It only uses data that is defined in the module that contains the layer. Data layers allow to decouple data within a module.
To combine data from different NDS.Live modules, data layers need to be stacked. Smart layer services combine multiple layers into one smart layer that is transmitted to the client. A data layer may contain references to features that reside in a different data layer. Such references create dependencies, which are usually resolved within the data container that carries the associated data layers.
A module may contain multiple layers of different types. For example, the Road module has a package road.layer that defines both a feature layer and a geometry layer. Furthermore, there are attribute layers, relation layers, and additional layer components.
The following figure shows multiple combinations of data layers for different use cases. For clients that support intelligent speed assistance only (ISA only), the smart layer service combines the basic road network with the speed limit layer. For the complex HAD use case, the smart layer contains the ADAS layer, the infotainment layer, and the HD layer in addition to the basic layers.
NDS data layers can be compressed, signed, and encrypted to achieve the following:
In the NDS.Live Developer Portal you can find out more about data layers, data layers, tiles, paths and more.
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