[mapserver-users] Re: map server a tile server

[Stephen Woodbridge]

On 7/26/2011 4:38 PM, jk wrote:
> Steve,
>
> Thanks. Two more questions,
>
> How do servers handle different zoom levels? Do I need to have a different
> base map for a pariticular zoom level? And, how to make the binding happen?
> I mean a zoom level binds to a particular shape file?

For rasters, mapserver will automatically resample the data to get the 
appropriate resolution needed for the request. Look in the mapserver 
Documentation [1] for how to setup and optimize raster data.

There is also docs at the same link [1] from Vector optimizations. For 
vector data you will often see multiple CLASS objects for a single data 
layer like streets where each class supports styling for some range of 
scales. This allows you to turn on/off layers, labeling and change 
styling like line widths, etc based on the requested image scale.

> and, when users pam, tiles will be requested; do I need to do anything so
> that the map server will serve those tiles (and only those tiles)...Is it
> automatic already?

OpenLayers handles this automatically.


[1] http://mapserver.org/optimization/index.html#optimization