[Mapserver-dev] virtualising attribute data

[Daniel Morissette]

Stephen Woodbridge wrote:
> 
> I for one would like to see a virtualised attribute capability in 
> mapserver because:
> 

I guess I don't understand what you all mean by "virtualized attributes" 
then. Is it the same as what OGR's SQL joins do or not?


> 1) setting up ODBC drivers are a real pain on Linux

Agreed that ODBC is a pain and I hate it, but what's the alternative? 
Implementing this only for MySQL and limiting everybody to using MySQL only?

Actually, MySQL table support could be added to OGR, that would still 
require less effort than reinventing the joins in MapServer.

> 2) currently joins are not supported on rendering

OGR joins work for rendering.

> 4) The prospect of learning PostGIS/postgre and moving all the Census 
> data and all the Tiger data to PostGIS just seems like an overwhelming 
> and time consuming task given all the other things I would like to be 
> doing.
> 

The prospect of reinventing the joins in MapServer when other tools 
already do it very well seems like an overwhelming and time consuming 
task given all the other things I would like to be doing.  ;)

Daniel
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  Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca
  DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
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