April 2023 Platform Release Notes

Versioning and automatic version deletion support for interactive map layers

Newly created interactive map layers support versioning wherein every update to a feature or set of features increments the version number of the layer. Note: This versioning is specific to interactive map layers and is entirely separate from catalog versions which tie to versioned layers only. For this release, this feature is supported via API only.

With this version support:

i) The author (User ID or App ID) of each feature change is recorded, enabling auditability of every change.

ii) Interactive map layers support a Time-To-Live configuration based on version, so that you can control storage costs by managing how many versions are retained. Learn more here: Automatic version deletion.

HERE Location Services SDKs  - Maps API for JavaScript

Maps API for JavaScript has integrated two new Location Services on Platform. HERE Traffic Vector Tile API and HERE Traffic API v7. It allows the easy display of traffic flow and traffic incidents on top if the HERE base map.

HERE Map Rendering Services  - new features

Raster Tile API v3

• Hill-shading (the topographic shape of hills and mountains) has been added to the Explore map style to highlight the location of mountains and hills. This feature is parity with the predecessor Map Tile API v2.
• Added a new feature to render tiles with vehicle restrictions only. See Tutorial #6 for a feature example. This is the parity feature for "truckonlytile" in the Map Tile API v2, that shows roads restricted for truck access and has a transparent background.

Map data updates for Vector Tile and Raster Tile APIs

• Increased the land parcels coverage in Australia.
• Added Haiti state labels.

HERE Lidar available on Marketplace

As of March 23rd, Lidar data self-serve purchasing is now available on the HERE Marketplace for Named Accounts and Non-Named accounts with credit card information stored. Partners are for now excluded due to some technical issues we aim to resolve soon. 

The self-serve offering is limited to a maximum of 100km of road. If customers have requests for more data, or different requirements they should reach out to their Account Executive to support. 

Limit Geocoding and Reverse Geocoding results to types relevant to the application

The optional parameter `types` for Geocoding and Reverse Geocoding endpoints allows applications to limit results to a specific type or to a list of types. For the Geocode endpoint, the `types` filter has BETA status. Autocomplete continues to support the types filter with status BETA. No change for Autocomplete.

The following the `types` filter are now supported by these three endpoints:

• Reverse Geocode: area, city, address, street
• Geocode (BETA): area, city, postalCode, address, street, houseNumber
• Autocomplete (BETA): area, city, postalCode

One example is to exclude place type results from /geocode responses if the application only needs to know about nearby addresses, streets, or administrative areas. Use the parameter : types=address,area

Find new Saudi Arabia Short Addresses with Geocoding

Saudi Arabia released a new addressing schema called short addresses. This is an easy to memorize code, consisting of 4 letters and 4 numbers that will make life simpler.

Example: Use the Geocoder endpoint to search by short address: 'q=RCTB4359' returns a precise house number result: 'RCTB4359, 4359 Abi Al Karam Street, Al Dhobbat, 12627 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia'.

 

HERE Tour planning

1. Objective functions: The first set of hierarchical objective functions are available now. The customers can optimize the tours to fit their use cases – for example to minimize the number of vehicles (optimizeTourCount -> minimize), or use all vehicles (optimizeTourCount -> maximize) or simply minimize the overall cost (minimizeCost) of the tours.
2. Maximum stops limit for vehicle: Along with other limits (maxDistance, shiftTime) within a vehicle shift, now maxStops is also available. Hence the dispatchers can limit on how many number of stops a driver should perform in a shift.
3. nameHint parameter for locations: Sometimes there are overlapping streets/roads and only the geo-coordinates are not enough to determine exact location of the destination. Tour planning now supports nameHint parameter that can be passed with the locations for exact determination of the location. The customer can pass street name or part of address to this parameter and tour planning will be able to locate the location correctly – so that the driver is not sent to the wrong address!

 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Writes to stream layers are no longer possible via the Publish API

Per the deprecation announcement in March 2022, it is no longer possible to write data to stream layers using the Publish API. Writes to stream layers are now only supported via the Ingest API.

TLS 1.0 and 1.1 Deprecation

Accordance with industry-wide best practice (RFC8996) we are planning to discontinue support for outdated Transport Layer Security (TLS) versions 1.0 and 1.1 for Map Tile API and Map Image API on 30 September 2023. From October 2023 on only TLSv1.2 and higher versions will be supported by these services.

Scope

This change affects requests to all Map Tile API and Map Image API endpoints in all environments (PRD, SIT, CIT) and corresponding regional endpoints, e.g.

Map Tile API:

• *.maps.ls.hereapi.com
• *.maps.api.here.com
• *.maps.cc.api.here.com
• *.maps.sit.ls.hereapi.com
• *.maps.cit.ls.hereapi.com
• *.maps.cit.cc.api.here.com

Map Image API:

• image.maps.ls.hereapi.com
• image.maps.cc.api.here.com
• image.maps.sit.ls.hereapi.com
• image.maps.cit.api.here.com

Impact on you

Requests to Map Tile API and Map Image API endpoints from client software which does not support TLS v1.2 or higher will fail.

Actions you need to take

Please ensure that your software stack accessing Map Tile API and Map Image API endpoints support TLSv1.2 or higher.

Note: the HERE Raster Tile API (the successor of Map Tile API) supports only TLS v1.2 and higher.

Further Information

• RFC8996 explains the rationale behind the industry-wide move to disable TLSv1 and TLSv1.1.