CHAPTER
 
11
The KML Data Format: Persisting Spatial Data
Being able to place markers and shapes on a map is very exciting and opens a world of capabilities, but it wouldn’t be of much use without the ability to save the shapes and reload them in a later session. For all types of data, there exist standards for describing it so they can be shared among systems and users, and geographical data are no exception. Among the many standards for spatial data, Google has adopted the KML standard, which is the topic of this chapter.
KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language, and it’s an XML schema for representing items on a map. KML was actually adopted by Google for Google Earth and can become very complex. When used with Google Earth, it can describe ...

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