Exploring Google Maps API

If you've been reading this book from the beginning, you probably remember that we have already encountered Google Maps previously, and as a map geek it is almost certain that you have already used Google Maps.

The web map application uses the Google Maps API, a JavaScript framework that you can incorporate in your application to build maps. Google Maps API lets you build maps with the data sets from Google, the same that you can see when using the Google application. In fact, it also supports the WMS standard, thereby enabling you to get data from any MapServer compliant with the standard. We'll go over several examples using version 3 of the Google Maps API, and how to incorporate GeoServer layers.

Let's start with a very simple map.