Mapserver

General MapServer notes

Current release is 7.0.4

MapServer is for building Web-based GIS applications.

What can I do with MapServer?

It can act as a WMS.
It can act as a WFS.
It does not act as a WFS-T, so you can't edit data. The workaround is to use TinyOWS.

What is a WMS? An OGC-compliant "Web Map Server"

What is a WFS? An OGC-compliant "Web Feature Server" allows WFS clients to access feature sets from the WFS instead of entire maps.

WFS-T "T" means transactions and that means writing data back to the server. TinyOWS is tightly tied to PostGIS

You can combine mapserver with other components to enhance its functionality.

Implementation

Linux

I have more information on my public Linux server down below, and details on setting up the server here: Mapserver on Linux

Windows

When I installed Mapserver on City of Corvallis Windows servers I made these notes: Mapserver on Windows This server is currently behind a firewall. (links on the Windows page only work on my desktop machine there.)

Using MapServer on Linux

Mapserver applications

A mapserver app is the collection of files necessary to create an interactive site. Mapserver by itself takes input in the form of spatial data and a .MAP file, and turns out an image file containing a map.

Creating an application requires assorted template and html and javascript files to 'wrap around' mapserver and present the maps and a user interface to allow panning, zooming, querying and so forth.

You can craft an application from scratch but a more sensible approach is to hang your data files on an existing applications. Here are some little reviews on a few of the more popular free applications for mapserver.

Openlayers and Leaflet

Openlayers and Leaflet are obvious choices.

Geomoose

I have a separate page for it... Geomoose

Short reviews of some MapServer apps running under Linux

I have sample setups of each of these on my server to try them out.

Rosa

Site: http://www.maptools.org/rosa/index.phtml

Rosa is a simple Java applet. It displays an image (GIF, JPEG or PNG) on which operations can be performed, these include single clicks, dragging a rectangle, ellipse, or polyline to define an area of interest. It can also have a toolbar and/or floating buttons with various functions attached to them. The information on the user's input will be returned through form parameters that you define.

If you install gmap, you get a copy of the Rosa applet at no extra charge.

I am thinking that Rosa's pretty mature since the last development release was 2003. There is an active discussion thread so usage and the support are still available. This could be considered a good thing (that is, it's stable and still usable).

There does not seem to be much documentation available and the Rosa portion of gmap does not work (for me). So I am going to try to get a copy going on my server and that end I will create this Rosa page.

gmap

My sample installation: http://mapserver.wildsong.biz/gmap/index.phtml
Site: http://gmap.maptools.org/

I have version 4.0 installed currently.

This is a sample PHP/Mapscript implementation. You can turn layers on and off, you can redraw and resize the map.

It will use the Rosa Java applet by default but you can turn it off. With my IE system, the Java app did not work. The non-Java version works fine.

Easy to set up. Especially if you want a map of Canada. :-)

Features: all the usual ones: select layers, a 'places' selection list, zoom in, zoom out, pan, and identify. A reference map. A list of map sizes (800x600 etc) The identify tool is set to query cities. (This is only a demo, don't be hard on it.)

Chameleon

This one is not working today. Brian Wilson 15:07, 7 May 2006 (PDT)

Chameleon is a framework on which to hang OGC compliant services (and Mapbender is another one). Since I don't really care about OGC right now (I am sufficiently confused already I am not pursuing full knowledge and understanding of Chameleon or Mapbender.

To get Chameleon running under Linux, I had to add support for wmsclient to MapServer (Mapscript) which in turn required curl.

"Running" is sort of metaphorical here. It's installed and generates no error messages but the demo does not work. I followed the installation instructions and then dozed off trying to read the documentation pages at http://chameleon.maptools.org/help/viewer.phtml

My sample: http://mapserver.wildsong.biz/chameleon/

The docs for it: http://mapserver.wildsong.biz/chameleon_docs

Site: http://chameleon.maptools.org/index.phtml

ELLAmaps

I used to have a section here all about ELLAmaps. I leave this note here out of nostalgia. It was used in Benton county for years. It only worked with Internet Explorer!

Maplab

Site: http://maptools.org/maplab/index.phtml

MapLab development is on hold, see the above link. I was not really knocked out when I did have my sample site going so I probably won't bother to re-activate it. IMHO, building map files has to be the weakest link in Mapserver.

Mapserver and SVG

Since version 4.5, mapserver has supported SVG as an output format. Refer to the official SVG howto at the mapserver site.

As with the other output formats, pretty much all you need do to use it is to specify the file type as SVG in the MAP file. (Of course, support for svg has to be built into mapserver.)

Change IMAGETYPE PNG to IMAGETYPE SVG and the output file will be xml. That's about it.