[MapServer-dev] Random MapServer FOSS4G Development Notes

[Seth G]

Hi devs,

Some random notes from discussions with various MapServer users and devs at FOSS4G. It might help drive discussions at a future PSC meeting. 

- OGC Maps API would ideally be the next big MapServer feature, but this would require developers and funding
- The R language is popular in the data science community. SWIG supports R so R-MapScript bindings could possibly be added in a future version. I can send a message to the users-list to gauge interest. 
- MapServer is likely to be used as the rendering engine for the pygeoapi backend. 
- Having to add TEMPLATE "ttt" to layers seems strange to new users. Maybe something to look at removing or replacing?
- Both CGI and FastCGI are used in production deployments. FastCGI usage is unaffected by the warm-up times for connecting to proj.db in newer versions of PROJ, however only CGI can be used in Amazon Lambda deployments. If no reprojections are required and inline projections are used, then it may be possible to skip this connection (paraphrasing - and possible a misunderstanding on my part, but it could be something to investigate). 
- From speaking to users, there are a few misunderstandings and gaps in docs/tutorials, including:
  - how to set up cloud deployments of MapServer
  - how multiple Mapfiles are run from a single MapServer instance (there is no overhead in having several Mapfiles)
  - no tutorials on OGC Features setup
  - there are many hidden cartographic features (thanks Lars for your talk that highlighted these!)

Finally, people are very keen to try out MapServer 8.0, and lots of people are already using that branch. 

Feel free to comment or add to any of the above.

Seth

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