[mapserver-users] testing mapserver large files rendering improvements

[Daniel Morissette]

Paul Ramsey wrote:
> I've been thinking about auto-building qix files... it would fix this
> problem and also fix the problem of the shape file that gets updated
> and out-of-synch with its index file.
> 
> I think programmers will hate the idea, but users, maybe they will
> like it? What do you think?
> 

You guessed right... I, as a programmer, am not keen on that kind of 
magic behavior. I like to think of dataset access by MapServer as a 
read-only operation, for security and various reasons I would not want 
to allow write access to the data dirs. But I'd be happy to see a 
"Mapfile optimizer" tool that does this kind of stuff.

BTW, a step we could easily take in the short term is add a msDebug() 
message at level >= MS_DEBUGLEVEL_TUNING warning users that a given 
shapefile hass no .qix and adding one could increase performance.

There could also be a test added at the same debug level and if the .shp 
file date is newer than the .qix then produce a warning saying that the 
.qix may be out of date.

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/