[OSGeo-Discuss] Web project feedback wanted

[Cameron Shorter]

Hi Kathy,
If you haven't done so already, I suggest you touch base with the folks 
at http://www.civicspacelabs.com/ .  They are also doing work with 
mapping political boundaries.  I'll let Kieran talk more to this.

And you might also want to look at http://communitymapbuilder.org for 
your web client.  It does feature rendering in Javascript (current 
version) and recent browser based SVG and VML for upcoming Mapbuilder 
version.  Hence there is no need for any pluggins like flash.

For your database, you may run into problems using MySQL instead of 
PostGIS.  Last time I looked at the MySQL support for GIS it only 
offered limited functionality.  Eg: MySQL only allows BoundingBox 
queries instead of query by Polygon.

Kathy Cashel wrote:
> I'm in the planning stages of an online mapping project, and wondering 
> if I have chosen the best tools for the job.
> 
> The goal is to present political campaign contributions amounts at a 
> zip-code level for the state of Virginia. I will need to create hundreds 
> of dynamic maps: one for every county, congressional district, and 
> senate district in the state. I then need clickable zip code polygons 
> colored according to how much money came from that area. Each of these 
> hundreds of maps could then be drawn hundreds of different ways, 
> depending on which politician you're looking at.
> 
> The organization is a nonprofit and can't afford a full-on ArcGIS web 
> solution, but has a copy of ArcView 8. In fact the web site is on a 
> shared server, so there is no way to install new software at the current 
> web host. My plan is to use ArcView's DSMapBook extension to create 
> static vector maps with landmarks (highways etc.) for each district, and 
> then use WorldKit (http://worldkit.org/) or something similar to draw 
> the zip code polygons on top and present the whole thing in Flash. 
> Geocoded polygon data would be stored in XML files for each district, 
> and presented in the Flash WorldKit wrapper. (Flash having the 
> advantages of being a common plug-in, making adding other interactivity 
> / animation easy, and being easily embedded into the current web pages.) 
> The contributions data for the zip code polygons is in a SQL database, 
> and would be displayed on the fly. The last hurdle is to get latitude / 
> longitude boundaries for each district map out of DSMapBook, which may 
> not be possible.
> 
> If there are other issues I haven't thought of, or better ways to do 
> this, or if you think this is a good plan, it would be very helpful to 
> hear about it. This is a non-commercial, non-charging project which will 
> make this information freely accessible to the public; any help or 
> advice you have to offer is very much appreciated.
> 
> 
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
http://cameron.shorter.net