[Featureserver] featureserver and dynamic layers?

[Bud P. Bruegger]

> Yes. There have been multiple people interested in adding this
> functionality. I have no plans to add the functionality at this time,
> but will gladly take patches to integrate it, and assist developers on
> it in any way I can. If anyone is looking to develop this functionality,
> I highly encourage discussion via the mailing list and the IRC Channel
> (irc.freenode.net, #featureserver).

Great!  So I start discussing right off..

First a question on OpenLayers:  when loading a layer, does it always
add a BBOX to the query sent to featureserver?  And does Openlayers
automatically take care of re-querying featureserver during panning and
zooming?

So that leaves that the URL must specify what data one wants.  I
suppose a simple (single table, no joins) generic case is quite
straight forward to express in GET parameters.  Does that sound right?

What I don't see very clearly is how querying relates to backends.  I'm
very centered on PostGIS.  Is this something to do for postgis only or
is this something to do for a group of backends that are "queryable"?
(And which are those?)

In the latter case, is there some existing abstraction layer (e.g.,
some component of an ORM) that already abstracts from backend-specific
querying?  (But I suppose you want to avoid additional dependencies
where possible?)

Hope this is a start

best cheers
-b