Looking for examples.

[Stephen Lime]

Hi Charlie: I myself have not built such an app but it is certainly possible. You'd probably need some simple wrapper to manage an individuals users configuration and supporting files. With MapScript, that wrapper and map making can be integrated into a single script. A user id could be determined initially and custom map files, database queries and even shapefiles created on-the-fly could be accessed on a user specific basis. Cleanup would best be handled by a different mechanism using cron.

The newest version of mapserv (CGI method) allow certain parameters (i.e. colors, expressions, symbols, etc.) to be changed on-the-fly by the user. State can be maintained by using a little bit of javascript to keep form controls in sync with the newly created map. 

Just about anything is possible with some scripting help on the server/client.

Steve

<<< "Charlie McCarty" <cmccarty at visi.com>  1/25 10:09p >>>
Recently my organization had a contractor build a simple and effective
Mapserver application.  The application works fast and well, and all around
folks like it.  It is a simple display of the current status of our
companies locations with the locations status symbolized properly.

I have built an earlier web mapping application using ArcView IMS, and was
able to bring quite a bit of ArcView native functionality through to the
users in a statefull  environment.  My MO was to tell the server to make a
new service, and redirect the user there.  It was a great deal of work, and
an experience I'd like to avoid for I believe the serving technology is just
getting better, and a desktop app wrapped up for web serving just isn't as
robust a server as it should be.

Does anyone have sites under construction - or already there - that offer a
degree of statefull  client server type functionality?  An example would be
custom class breaks and area symbols for a map layer, with a custom join of
data to boot.  Or, a custom interpolation of point data to a raster based on
a database query (pulling the x,y,and z), then presenting that to the user.

Is it possible to call to the server to quickly build an individual
mapservice, re-direct the user to it, track it for a pre-determined
lifetime, let the user make special symbology requests, and then when a
logical lifetime is up, clean up the service and server?

I have not picked up Mapserver myself, but will be doing so shortly, and am
looking for any leads in this area.