[GRASS5] GRASS, MapServer and external data

[Markus Neteler]

Hi,

here at MPA we currently face the problem that we have XX GB of
aerial data with shall be made available to GRASS (for analysis)
and MapServer (for web based visualization). The problem is
that we don't want to replicate this huge amount of data.

Two ways to address this problem are possible, I would like
to know your opinion which to prefer:

 - import all data into GRASS, use GDAL/libgrass support to
   allow MapServer to directly read GRASS locations
   [tried, but obviously the libgrass/GDAL interface is broken]
 
 - keep data outside of GRASS, read data with MapServer through
   GDAL [working], enable GRASS to read external (raster) data
   through GDAL without importing them. The latter may be done
   through a read-only "mapset", which needs a sort of middleware
   to feed this fake mapset with external data. It seems that
   this would require lot's of work to support such fake mapsets.
   But it could be interesting since it is a general solution
   for large data management (would also need the read mechanism
   of MapServer or similar to read regional subsets out of all
   the external raster map files).

Looking forward your comments,

 Markus