[mapserver-users] Reading MapServer output as a theme in Arcview

[Tyler Mitchell]

Thanks for the comments,
I am aiming at the user desktop where editing functions that people may
already be used could be used.
I was thinking along the lines of writing some Avenue or VBA extensions
(combined with other shell scripts or programs) to query a mapserver and
return the results to Arcview/ArcGIS as a georeference image.
The support for image types is already there.
I know what you mean about hooks.  But I'm a fairly high-level guy in terms
of programming so I definately wasn't thinking about anything that would
make programming calls (and probably not be too efficient either ;).  I'm
still not used to the idea of API's.  I'll get there eventually :)
I need to learn more about OpenEV - I've only used to display images and 3d
drapes.  I've never been able to load in shapefiles or the like.  I like
your ideas though.  Thanks.



                                                                                             
                    Dave McIlhagga                                                           
                    <mcilhagga at dmsol       To:     Tyler Mitchell <TMitchell at lignum.com>     
                    utions.ca>             cc:     mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu         
                                           Fax to:                                           
                    01/08/2002 04:48       Subject:     Re: [mapserver-users] Reading        
                    PM                      MapServer output as a theme in Arcview           
                                                                                             
                                                                                             




Tyler,

Extending existing commercial products such as ArcView always adds an
extra level of uncertainty and usually complexity due to the "black-box"
nature of the product.  If what ESRI or anybody else provides doesn't
include the right hook, you're out of luck or you need to implement a
major workaround to do the trick.  Not to mention - ESRI will be more
enclined to see you handle things the "ESRI" way rather then what would
necessarily be best.

I haven't fully looked into what can be done with ArcView ... although I
know Refractions has made some great progress in making MapServer
support the ESRI Geography Network calls if I'm not mistaken.

One possibility is the use of a package such as Grass or OpenEV that
could be extended to support OGC Web Map Server (WMS) requests.  Being
open source products, this certainly would be possible.  Having
developed with OpenEV in the past, I know that this product could be
extended to support WMS layers - requested from MapServer or any other
server supporting the WMS protocol.

This spring/summer, we will be working on the addition of Web Feature
Server support (the ability to serve vector data in GML format) that
would mean something like OpenEV could not only get images back, but
also raw vector data extending it's flexibility significantly.

A few thoughts on what might be possible ...

Dave



Tyler Mitchell wrote:
>
> I noticed there is an Arcview map file setup utility for Mapserver,
that's
> great.
> One limiting factor to the Mapserver concept that I am running into is
that
> of providing data to existing applications like Arcview, etc.  The other
> internet map servers out there appear to also support existing desktop
GIS
> products (I'm thinking of ERMapper's IWS and ESRI's IMS).  Can we do this
> in the open source arena too?  I think I probably shouldn't be trying to
do
> this with Mapserver, so recommendations for other open source solutions
> would be gladly accepted.
>
> I'd like to have MapServer still serve up an image map but I want this to
> appear as a standard theme in Arcview.
> Has anyone been doing this or looking at it?  I am new to MapServer, but
am
> impressed with the flexibility.   I don't suggest that this is a simple
> function to implement, but I am certain we could do something pretty
> interesting here.  Obviously handling legends, map content, etc. would be
a
> whole other ball of wax to bring into Arcview.  Even just viewing one MS
> Layer in Arcview would bridge the gap for those of us trying to get out
of
> the proprietary world and into a more easily distributed GIS.
>
> The only reason I bring it up is to see if anyone has looked at this idea
> and if you have any ideas for other solutions.
>
> Tyler

--
Dave McIlhagga
President, DM Solutions Group

http://www.dmsolutions.ca
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