MapServer vs. Deegree

[Brent Wood]

On 8/12/05, Nuttall Edward W <EWNUTTALL at qinetiq.com> wrote:

> Is there any reason why I should choose MapServer over Deegree? It seems to
> based on legacy technologies (C, CGI) yet most of the recent GIS development
> books around seem to use it in their examples?
> 
> Edward, 

Hmmm.. A terminology issue here? Is legacy necessarily perceived as bad?

Try proven, accepted, wide user base, lots of support, tutorials, documentation
instead :-)

If C is a legacy language, should we be discarding Linux, and all those
numerical Fortran 77 libraries must no longer be useful. All those RDBMS
systems gone as well? & GRASS must be well past its use by date!

Any software as widely used as Mapserver, proven stable & successful over years
is probably not going to make the best use of the latest technologies.

Is your priority to have tools based on new technologies or proven effective,
stable solutions? Which is not to say that newer solutions may be as stable &
even better than some older ones. Just that legacy is not all bad :-)

For some info on the C vs Java Open Source GIS toolsets, Paul Ramsey's paper at
http://www.refractions.net/white_papers/ (choose view the pdf) is a useful
resource.


Cheers,

  Brent