Using .map file as a raster layer source

[Tamas Szekeres]

It would be useful to make the possibility to use a .map file as a data
source of a raster layer in another .map file.

The main benefits of this enhancement are:

1. High number of maps could be joined into a single map. The maps could
be organized hierarchically.
2. Tileindex support can be used to filter the maps to be drawn.
3. There's no need to create temporary images in the filesystem as with
WMS layers

In order to try this functionality a patch have been added in
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1445

A sample LAYER section in the map file could be:

LAYER
  NAME "tiles"
  CONNECTIONTYPE OGR
  CONNECTION "tiles.shp"
  TYPE POLYGON
  ...
END

LAYER
  NAME "joined_maps"
  TYPE RASTER
  TILEINDEX "tiles"
  ...
END

tileindex file contains the map files in the "LOCATION" field.

Thanks for any comments,

Tamas Szekeres