[fdo-internals] Raster Catalogs (aka Tileindexes)

[Jason Birch]

Frank Wrote:
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The proposal looks good to me.  The only downsides I can see are that
linear scanning of the XML config doc may not scale up to hundreds of
thousands of tiles as well as might be hoped, and that folks not using
MapGuide Studio may not have a convenient way of producing the config
files.  However, I don't see either of these as a significant issue.
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Personally, I think that referencing an external FDO resource (SDF or
SHP) would be a better way of solving this problem a few reasons:

 - You don't have to re-implement the spatial filter in the raster
provider

 - The image extents could easily be displayed in Studio / Web Studio
rather than the image itself when at full extents for an improved
authoring experience

 - Image extents do not need to have rectilinear contents.  For
instance, only the data part of a satellite scene could return a match

 - You don't have to have a complex config file.  Just a pointer to an
external file that matches a predetermined schema (image path +
geometry).

In any case, though, adding the bounds to the config file is a good
interim measure. ;)

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I would like to help the webstudio guys add raster support including
building the config doc.  It should be pretty easy.
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My concern with this would be those of us who are using MapGuide Studio
with MapGuide Open Source.  If you are going to do this, could you
please consider making it modular enough that I could easily adapt it to
a standalone page that generates the config file, creates a new
unmanaged raster data source, and uploads the config file into the
resource content?

Jason