[mapserver-dev] GeoServer superseeding MapServer in Europe?

[Olivier Courtin]

On Jul 7, 2010, at 8:31 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:

> Sounds to me like the integrated stack is what made GeoServer win in
> this case, not the superiority of the software itself.

+1

Some (French) big agencies choose the JAVA world (also) for
scalability reasons, could be interresting so to communicate
on load balanced GIS CGI architecture.

So there's IMO three kind of publics:
1) The ones who want JAVA at any price, because it's JAVA
2) The ones who want SDI common features, nicely packed, i.e:
      WMS + WFS-T + CSW (+ CMS)
3) The ones who are still able to choose themself and deploy all
      the atomic apps fitting their needs

INSPIRE next identified issues:
- Additional lang parameter handle (for instance allow GetCapabilities  
in several languages)
- WFS 2.0/ISO 19142 (partial) support  (lot of additionnal stuff like  
stored procedures and so on)

> I have to admit that the alternative to "the stack" in the MapServer
> case is a bit messy, a set of independent tools each with their own
> paradigms, quirks and config files, and in different languages:
>
> - mapserv.exe (native binary)
> - MapScript (PHP, Python, or one of the others if you dare)
> - TinyOWS (for WFS-T, which works great BTW), also a native binary
> - TileCache (Python)
> - FeatureServer (Python)
>
> One of the things we've been talking about here (at Mapgears) is  
> coming
> up with an integrated set of tools for all of the above with a
> consistent config file and possibly all native binaries... but that
> would require some work.

I could help/participate on TinyOWS/MapServer stuff,
we could imagine several ways to do it:

- A meta package with a meta and unified config file
- Allow TinyOWS to parse/use also existing MapFile
- Merging MapServer and TinyOWS in a single app


Let me know,

--
Olivier