MAPSERVER: Implementation Question

[Neil Atherton]

Hello All,

I am currently part of a team developing a Task/Production Management/Work Flow Management application for a client here in Australia.  The core of this application is the concept of a "task", which is basically a set of requirements that come in from customers (our client's customers) and are passed around the organisation.  The result of a task is one or more "products", which are what is built in response to the customer requirements.  Both tasks and products have a geospatial component, in that they have coordinates stored against them.

We have been asked to use Oracle as the DBMS and to build our application on top of TRIM.

I have requirements to build a map search interface.  They want a map that they can draw a bounding box on and have the application return all tasks and products that fall within that area.  That geospatial search can also be combined with a textual search (e.g. date ranges, product author etc).

That should be enough background...

One of the solutions I've been looking at is Mapserver.  The web site says that data can be added via a delimited text file, and I think I've found examples of applications that use an index file to query against.  I had envisioned something like the following implementation:


*        An index file (or files) is built when products/tasks are stored

o   This index file lists all products/tasks against a set of coordinates - it would be as simple as product/task number vs. coordinates.

*        The user draws a bounding box on the map search interface deployed via Mapserver

*        A query is made against the index file(s)

*        The returned product/task numbers are passed to TRIM

*        TRIM joins this search result with any other search criteria (e.g. date, author, title etc)

*        TRIM executes this joined query

*        The results can be returned to Mapserver somehow, so the user can see them graphically (e.g. a flag at each of the product/task locations)

Does that sound sensible or is it too simplistic?  Our application really is light-on when it comes to GIS content, and the other solutions I'm looking at (e.g. ArcIMS/ArcSDE, Dekho/ArcGIS Server) look to be overkill.

Thank you for your time,
Neil


Neil Atherton
Principal Engineer
Lockheed Martin Australia Information Systems and Global Services (IS&GS),
a division of Lockheed Martin Australia Pty Limited
Ph: 0419 035 319




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