[mapserver-users] Strategy for dealing with Census Data?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

As a newbie to this list, I am wondering if there is a searchable
archive that I can check before I post? Where? How?

Has anyone loaded up the Census data onto MapServer? 

In reading the documentation it appears that layers most be single shp
fileset - Is this correct?

If so, that implies that all 50+ state/state equiv. files that the
Census releases for a given "layer" need to be merged into a single huge
.shp file - Is this correct? Then I suppose you need to run shptree on
it. Is there a utility to combine .shp files if that is required?

Is there a better/other strategy for dealing with this that I have
missed?

Thanks for the help,

  -Stephen Woodbridge
   http://web-maps.org/