MS RFC 22a: Feature cache for long running processes and query processing (update)

[Umberto Nicoletti]

Warning: rant ahead

> > I think the users who need a Web GIS should be looking more at MapGuide
> > than MapServer.

I share Tamas' concern about this statement. If MapGuide does it all
then why am I spending so much time on developing and supporting
mapserver? Because MapServer is open source, is small, fast and
efficient and has not been open-sourced by a company that should have
open-sourced the DWG format instead.
Note that I am not against MapGuide or AutoDesk (only sligthly
cautious), but a bad start is hard to forget.

>
> If we always direct the people to other projects to solve the problems and
> keep mapserver to support only a narrow subset of the Web GIS capabilities
> then the project will eventually die.
>

Maybe all this 'machinery' for caching could be moved out of the core
and into mapscript so that it can be easily programmed in a higher
level language?

Umberto