Version 3.3 Status

[Paul G. Allen]

Stephen Lime wrote:

> Greetings: I plan on releasing 3.3 late this week, probably on Friday or Saturday.
> I'll also have ready a MapServer test suite of about 20 simple examples showing
> various type of functionality. MapScript will also be included although I would
> consider it alpha code. A full list of changes will accompany an announcement
> at the end of the week.
>

Great!

I have a question/suggestion/comment (can't decide exactly which one it is, you decide
;)

While discussing security issues with a couple KPLUG (Kernel Panic Linux Users Group,
www.kernel-panic.com) and a couple MapServer users, it occurred to me that it might be
desirable to include the ability to do authentication in MapServer. Someone (forget
who, maybe he'll speak up) suggested that maybe it could be an option in the .ini
file. By embedding this ability into mapserv itself, additional data security (above
the seemingly limited security offered by web servers and CGI) could be had by
disallowing mapserv to create a map or query without proper UID/password. As further
security, the authentication portion could be a module so that a user could change the
algorithm if they wish (this way no one could be sure what algorithm is being used for
the password, even though the mapserv source is readily available).

Comments are very welcome, especially since I am new to web related programming,
though not new to other types of programming?

PGA