[mapserver-users] Mapserver 5.6.3, IIS, and thread safety

[Anzel, Phil - Fort Collins, CO]

All,

As per http://www.mapserver.org/faq.html#is-mapserver-thread-safe , various parts of MapScript, and presumably its invocation via the C# wrapper API, are not thread safe. We're experimenting with use of MapScript in the form:
  map = mapscript.msLoadMapFromString(mapFileText, null);
  imageObj imageObj = map.draw();
  byte[] img = imageObj.getBytes();
This is to be performed inside of C# code, offered as a Web Service by IIS under some enterprise flavor of Windows 2002 or beyond (but not Windows Vista or beyond).

Under Apache, I've heard that a "pre-fork" worker could be used to maintain sufficient isolation between Apache MapServer server processes. Can anyone advise whether this is correct, and what a suitable IIS configuration equivalent would be?

Thanks,
- Phil Anzel
Web Soil Survey team
Vistronix Inc., for USDA/NRCS