[Mapserver-users] WMS Cllient for ArcView 3.X

[Brent Fraser]

Daniel,

The errors reported were AFTER the map file parsing.

Some background:

In fact Mapserver failed to create an image because the IMAGEPATH in the WEB
object was not set to an existing directory.  This does not generate a error
during map file parsing.  That's ok since I was using Mapserver as a WMS
server, it doesn't need a temp dir for the images as it sends them as a data
stream to the web server and on to the browser (or so I thought).  However,
msWMSGetMap attempts to do a msSaveImage, which does a msSaveImageGDAL (I
had switched my outputformat from GD to the GDAL driver), which tries to
write a temp file to IMAGEPATH.  That failed, and displayed an error showing
all the tiles it couldn't find in the tile index.

So the rule is:  Make sure IMAGEPATH is set to a valid directory if you are
using GDAL drivers for output.


I agree that the map file should be valid before site deployment, but
anything we can do to make the pre-deployment step easier would be a very
good thing.


Some suggestions for Mapserver (and associated utilities):

1. Fix the XML error reporting.  Internet Explorer complains that it's not
valid XML (I then do a "view source" to see the text generated from
Mapserver).

2. Report Mapfile errors as XML.  We should be able to check if "Request="
is a CGI parameter.  Or use some other non-mapfile mechanism to determine if
the protocol is OGC.

3. Build a "lint"-like utility for map files to report errors, and other
less serious issues.  This has been requested a few times over the years.


And a suggestion for WMS clients:

Show the XML returned from the server (even when expecting an image)

Thanks to all..
Brent

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Morissette" <morissette at dmsolutions.ca>
To: "Paul Ramsey" <pramsey at refractions.net>
Cc: "mapserver-users" <mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 10:27 AM
Subject: Re: [Mapserver-users] WMS Cllient for ArcView 3.X


> Paul Ramsey wrote:
> > The error reported turned out to be caused by the following:
> >
> > "The error was related to TILEIDEX and missing data raster data that
> > GDAL was trying to find.  When crafting the ogc file I had guessed at
> > the extents and was trying to map more data than I had. (Now I need to
> > see why Mapserver/GDAL did not IGNORE_MISSING_DATA like it was supposed
> > to.)"
> >
> > I do not know where in the cycle that falls. Sounds like after mapfile
> > parsing but before data (or during) eading.
> >
>
> This should have been caught since based on this description it seems
> like this is a map rendering error.  However it may be a
> misinterpretation of the error message, what was the exact error
> message?   Is this WMS server public?
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>   Daniel Morissette               morissette at dmsolutions.ca
>   DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
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