MapServer and Sensor Observation Service

[Daniel Morissette]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> 
> Could you briefly describe the SOS, and how it would be
> integrated with MapServer?  Is this another datasource,
> we we read from remote sensors and then plot the results
> as point features?  It is another way of publishing MapServer
> point data (where mapserver is the server)?  Both?
> 

At this point we are only looking at publishing data through a SOS 
interface. The data would come from one of MapServer's supported data 
sources (preferably postgis) and be published via a SOS interface, there 
is no talk of supporting connections to sensors or to remote SOS.

Note: The sensor data would be collected and stored in the database by 
some pre-existing and sensor-specific mechanism independent of MapServer.

> If the implementation were able to be quite localized to one
> module in MapServer, and if it sorts of fits with the mapserver
> role of publishing geospatial data on the web, then I don't
> think I would mind it living within the mapserver tree.
> 

Yes I think it would be localized to a mapsos.c (or mapsensor.c), very 
much like WMS is local to mapwms.c and WFS is local to mapwfs.c.

The configuration would be done through a bunch of new metadata 
elements, once again similar to the way WMS/WFS/WCS work. However the 
amount of metadata required for a SOS might be larger than for a WMS. 
Also, some external files might be used, for instance, the sensor 
metadata would not be generated by MapServer, it would be stored in a 
static XML (SensorML) file that MapServer would simply forward to the 
client without trying to interpret it.

Of course, if it is decided to make this an official feature of 
MapServer then an RFC will be written and the implementation plan 
discussed here, but before writing an RFC we need to know if the rest of 
the developers think this belongs in MapServer or not.

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