[mapserver-users] Re: ArcIMS and MapXtreme comparison

[Obe, Regina DND\MIS]

I have to agree.  Plus would like to add - Our GIS group uses Arc IMS (or at
least are still trying to get that working well - I'm actually not a mapping
person - just a database programmer/IT Support) - so can't make comments as
to why they chose that aside from marketing hype and their colleagues use
it.  I came across mapserver when looking for an alternative to get this
project done that was long overdue.

Mapserver's speed of loading parcels was just as fast as Arc IMS and in many
cases faster (ESRI shape files consisting of 150,000 parcel footprints,
200,000 building footprints) --> zoom in to an address --> in 1 second on a
dual 400 Pentium with 1Gig RAM.   - I was able to get the project done in
one week - from discovering mapserver.  

Also ArcIMS for the web server piece was a pain to install - first you've
got to go out and get/buy a servlet engine and install that on your web
server- then you install Arc IMS.  then if you run into problems you have to
start all over again.  At least that's the way it was for us on Windows
NT/2000 which is our platform.

With mapserver I just had to copy the files in the right location - make
some configuration settings on my webserver - no install.  Now I'm
experimenting with Mapscript/PHP for our more advanced projects.  The PHP
install on NT/2000 was also a breeze compared to the Arc IMS installs.

I haven't experimented with getting SDE working on mapserver (although it
does support it) so can't make comments about that - although I'm looking
into PostGIS as an alternative to SDE.  I also haven't tried loading our
existing MapInfo TAB files on Mapserver, but I don't think ArcIMS supports
those anyway and we do have a lot of data in MapInfo TAB format that it
would be nice to be able to use.

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt.Wilkie [mailto:Matt.Wilkie at gov.yk.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 12:17 PM
To: mapserver-users at lists. gis. umn. edu (E-mail)
Subject: RE: [mapserver-users] Re: ArcIMS and MapXtreme comparison 


Hi Flavio,

> + supports ESRI Shape (better then ESRI ...) and MapInfo TAB 
> and others

Would you please elaborate on this point? I'm not being antagonistic,
I just want some hard data to show around the office. :)


-matt

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Matt Wilkie * Yukon Renewable Resources GIS
http://renres.gov.yk.ca/pubs/rrgis/
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