[Mapserver-dev] virtualising attribute data

[Sean Gillies]

On Sep 16, 2004, at 9:58 AM, Attila Csipa wrote:

> I was thinking about the possibilities of virtualising attribute data 
> for my
> needs, meaning that for example a layer that has spatial data in a 
> shapefile
> has the attribute data in plain mysql (this is how it works in my 
> prototype
> test and happens to be the most requested feature that I got). Note 
> that this
> is _not_ the same as doing a join and not like using 
> virtualspatialogr. I'd
> like to hear if anyone has some ideas or thoughts on this. Obviously 
> with
> some layer types it is much harder or impossible to separate the 
> spatial from
> the attribute data, and the easiest route would be to perhaps make a
> virtualxbase DBF handler, but this is not a universal solution even 
> though
> this is what I think the great majority of users would use it for - 
> using
> spatial data from SHP files with attributes from 
> DBF/mysql/postgre/odbc/etc.
>

Attila,

I think that an abstract cross-database view would be best accomplished 
by
some middleware
::

     mapserver <---- mw <----- shapefiles & mysql

and the middleware would use WFS to connect with mapserver.  Is this 
idea
of any use?

cheers,
Sean

--
Sean Gillies
sgillies at frii dot com
http://users.frii.com/sgillies