feedback on possible mapserver enhancements

[Pericles S. Nacionales]

Howard Butler wrote:
> On Feb 4, 2008, at 11:15 AM, Daniel Morissette wrote:
>
>> thomas bonfort wrote:
>>>>> And last but not least :
>>>>> * what would you think of having a wfs-t implementation for 
>>>>> mapserver,
>>>>> probably at first limited to postgis backends, and based on the
>>>>> tinyows project?
>>>> A year ago I would have said no, but several times in recent months 
>>>> I've had questions
>>>> from folks that seem to use WFS-T as a means of selecting their web 
>>>> rendering tool. It's
>>>> becoming a differentiating feature. I'm not familiar with TinyOWS 
>>>> though. Are you
>>>> suggesting assimilating TinyOWS?
>>> the advantage of this would be to avoid having to deploy another
>>> server along side mapserver in order to treat the wfs-t side of an
>>> application,as you pointed out. in finality it would mean porting of
>>> the tinyows code into mapserver.
>>
>> There is so much demand for WFS-T by our users that I am slowly 
>> giving up and starting to think that we may have to do WFS-T in the 
>> end. Please don't tell anyone that I wrote that. ;) ;)
>>
>> I am not sure about integrating TinyOWS code... I have never looked 
>> at TinyOWS, but wouldn't a simple merge be messy? How would that fit 
>> with existing mapwfs.c code? Could we not just extend the current 
>> implementation (and make the necessary architecture changes) to 
>> support transactions?
>
>
> MapServer is not a GIS!  MapServer is not a GIS!  I am not supportive 
> at all of implementing WFS-T in MapServer.  What benefit is there to 
> be gained by doing so that can't be accomplished by setting up a 
> GeoServer instance alongside MapServer?  IMO, it is the best-of-breed 
> open source WFS-T that's out there, with tons of momentum and 
> development force behind it -- why go to the trouble to re-implement 
> it in MapServer?
>
> Technically, one challenge I see for MapServer implementing WFS-T is 
> that MapServer apps generally expect to be transient and stateless.  
> MapServer does not do well in long running processes (any MapScripter 
> who's tried can give you gobs of complaints about this), and it has no 
> concept of transactional operations which I think would be very 
> challenging to bolt on in any smooth sort of way.
>
> IMO, MapServer should continue to improve upon what it is good at, and 
> WFS-T is not something that I think it would be good at without a lot 
> of re-engineering (we hate churn, remember?).  With some effort, we 
> could have something workable and maybe even functional, but it will 
> get nowhere close to what GeoServer has.
My $0.02...  I agree that MapServer is not a GIS.  But adding a WFS-T 
support still doesn't make MapServer a GIS.  ...maybe one step closer. 
:)  Also, what's the point for a user to install GeoServer and MapServer 
when GeoServer can do what MapServer does?  Won't you agree that 
MapServer loses out in that scenario?  I doubt many users would want to 
install both and manage all those configuration files.  I also agree 
that it would be a technical challenge to add WFS-T support in MapServer 
but having TinyOWS code already available for review/merge should help 
some in that regard.

If WFS-T is to be supported--and I support the idea--it should be 
optional and that it should not have a drastic effect on MapServer's 
rendering performance.

-Perry