[mapserver-users] MapServer, ArcIMS, or SVG??

[Shawn L Johnston]

On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Steve Simpson wrote:

> Hello listers,
>
> This mailing list seems to be great and MapServer looks like a great
> technology.  I hope you can help me.  Here's my situation:
>
> I just started a job working for a mapping demographics company and
> I am in charge of putting a complex app written in MapBasic online.  I don't
> have any previous gis experience but have lots of enterprise java and some
> Microsoft experience.  I've had to quickly become familiar with the multiude
> of technologies in gis.  The natural fit for our solution is MapXtreme, but it's
> to expensive.  There seems to me to be three options:
> --ArcIMS
> --MapServer
> --SVG
> I know that you all will say, use MapServer, but try to be objective.

Ok, use mapserver. ;)

I think its probably hard to give a recommendation on which route to go
without knowing a bit more of the project goals/requirements. It would
help if you can share a few more details of what your trying to place
online.

My guess is that if you need to put this up quickly and your developers
are mostly asp folk you probably wan't to drop the SVG for now and look at
mapserver and ims more closely. If your looking for performance and don't
need a full featured gis I'd say go with mapserver. If you need more gis
features and performance can take a back seat (and cost for ims is not out
of question) then you might want to think a bit more about ims.

> Some questions:
> --Can MapServer be used with Java or Microsoft (Active Server Pages)?

Mapserver will run on NT with IMS, though its been a while since I've
tried that.

You can use java with mapserver. Check out the gallery and the docs page
on the ms homepage.

I don't think anyone has made mapscript for asp, but depending on what you
need to do you might create wrappers in asp that feed variables into
mapserver.

> --Would ArcIMS be more of a natural fit for Java or Microsoft?
> --SVG seems to be a cool technology.

I'll have to defer these too someone else. ;)