GMaps Plugin provides an excellent method for visualizing geographic points on a map that can be aligned to business performance measures. Many customers often ask how many points I can plot on a map at one time. In the Xcelsius world the answer is usually not strait forward since the dashboard often caries an overhead depending on the number of dependencies with components, data, and logic.

The first question I always ask if they are using Latitude, Longitude values or addresses. This has a major impact on performance because an address needs to be geocoded before the icon is renders (this can tabe about 150ms per data point). If you utilize long,lat coordinates there is 0 latency before all data points are drawn on the map.

I would say that 150-300 data points at a time within a Google Map is adequate for expecting good performance on most computers (assuming you are using long,lat). For organizations who require the geocode service, 20-80 is adequate from a user acceptance standpoint because of the latency of the geocode service. The good news is the Google Premier API provides half the latency of the free API.

We have benchmark tested with 1000, which presents sluggish performance with Long,Lat pairs so my recommendation is to restrict the data points that you plot at one time within a map.

If you do not have your address data stored in a "Long,Lat" format I have found a nice batch geocode website that can do the transformation for you: http://www.batchgeocode.com/.

Let me know what your experience is and how you are using these features. If you have not had a chance to test out GMaps Plugin for Xceslsius, you can download a free trial today.