[mapserver-dev] Tile Access API

[Daniel Morissette]

Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 05:22:48PM -0400, Daniel Morissette wrote:
>> In my opinion, tiling requires caching in most cases 
> 
> Why? 
> 

Performance... non-cached tiles via CGI don't cut it in my opinion... 
they are fine for a toy project in your basement or perhaps for an 
intranet with only a few users, but in real life production sites 
caching is almost a must.

> 
>> Yeah, I know what you're thinking, TileCache requires Python and that's 
>> one more component to maintain when we already have MapServer installed.
> 
> I don't consider this the important showstopper, though others certainly
> do.
> 

Lots of developers seem to misunderstand the day to day reality of their 
users.

There are lots (and more than you'd think) of users of MapServer and 
related tools who have only one foot on the bright side and who work in 
shops with a close IT department that keeps very tight control on the 
servers. We had some of those 10 years ago and that's still the sad 
reality today. It takes months (sometimes years?) of efforts for their 
IT departments to review, approve and deploy new technologies. So once 
they've managed to get MapServer through the process the last thing they 
want is to have to get Python, PHP, and/or a bunch of scripts through 
the IT approval process.

Funny enough, in many cases in those shops, any script written in VB or 
.NET will make it through to the server without any problem.

> 
> Still wouldn't solve the problem of idiotproofing configuration, which
> is the reason I'm in favor of the RFC.
> 

I guess that's the point I don't get. If the benefit of idiotproofing 
the config of a tile server is higher than the performance costs then I 
agree that there is value to this addition.

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/