use Mapscript to open GDAL data sources

[Michael Haertel]

hi all,

recently I heard about

http://dl.maptools.org/dl/php_ogr/php_ogr_documentation.html

and I wonder if there is a corresponding GDAl extension somewhere.

I try to access GDAl data sources, especially DTED files with MapScript but
although it is possible to add them as a layer in a mapserver mapfile I
fail to simply get the extents in Pixels or ground units from a DTED file.

Is there a way to get the extents from a DTED1 file? I tried to add the
dted file to a layer and performed a raster query on that layer but because
of the 1,400,000 cells this method is not a practicable way to get the
extents for that layer.

Is there a way to pass the DTED object to GDs image functions? Or is there
a php GDAl extension?

Or is there another mapscript solution to get the extents from a DTED file
and open it as an image? Of course I can convert the DTED with GDAL
utilities to a TIFF file (With 16Bit values) but I'd rather access the files
directly.

Thanks for any help,

Michael