polymaps & poly... polygons
If you're talking about GeoJSON you can use any kind of database, and backend server, you want so long as it:
1) Expects to receives TMS or /{zoom}/{x-coord}/{y-coord}.json style URLs and can convert Z/X/Y in to a bounding box.
(Take a look at something like Tilestache (.org) if you want/need to see the math involved in doing that.)
2) Returns GeoJSON.
For styling , and adding interactive bits, to the data results you'll want to define a "load" function using the layer's on() method. For example:
var l = org.polymaps.geoJson(); l.url("http://example.com/tiles/{Z}/{X}/{Y}.json"); l.on("load", function(e){ ... });
The Polymaps site has lots of good documentation and example code, but I've also included the slides and sample code from a Polymaps workshop I did recently:
http://www.aaronland.info/talks/where2011/
http://www.aaronland.info/talks/where2011/workshop
Cheers
Ok, so here's the deal - This Blog Post
Cleared EVERYTHING up. It's a must read for anybody playing with Polymaps. I found it via Henry on Reddit
Aaron mentioned using TileStache and indeed... That is the key, I just did not see how - The above blog post is quite informative in using TileStache. Big Win.