[mapserver-users] Best way of returning data at a point and doing something with it?

[Robert Crossley]

Hi,

First posting, so firstly I'd like to compliment the developers on the progress so far.  We've been trialling Mapserver for a month now, and have been able to make it do 
quite a lot thanks to the archives of this list and the docs so far.  Very impressed with the product.

This list is also pretty impressive.  I've been on the MapInfo-L list for about 8 years now, and thought it was pretty good, but the correspondance that flows though this 
list overshadows that list greatly.  Be a while before I'll be able to contribute much, but will probably develop some MapInfo apps to generate Map files etc. that I could 
share.  Look forward to the development on being able to read Mapinfo files also.

Anyway, we have reached a point in a project that we have to make some strategic decisions and we need some advice on the best way of proceeding from here.

We have a Image Web Server (IWS) app delivering aerial and satellite imagery to clients and MapServer delivering vector data to the IWS server on request.  We 
also have an ActiveX control on the client side to give a lot of functionality at the client end (possibly to be replaced by a java applet in the future when IWS goes 
java).  The application is for a captive audience so can be as specific as we want.  Once this one is over, we intend to port it to a linux server, and have a simpler 
client side app that isn't MS based, but for now it is on a M$oft site.

Our issue is to how best allow clients to query a location and change this data.

We have used the standard query tool to be able to extract the data from a shape file and display in a table with a map.  Very cute.  We also put some buttons on it to 
close the window and dummy submit button to a database that could contain code to write data back to the server.

But the data in the production system will be on a SQL server database, so it seems that we have a couple of options:
- making the data for the query layer to be a table, or preferably a view in the M$ SQL-server database (how hard is this?)
- make the query templates ASP pages that uses the ID retreived from MapServer to then retrieve the data from the database and display it in a table.

It seems that either way, the page can have a submit button that calls a subroutine to process any changes to the data on the client side and writes it back to the 
database.

The first option seems conceptually simpler and may be more powerful than we are giving it credit for, but the second option may be more flexable and allow us to 
eventually use a dll to do the data retreival from the database.  Like I said, am not sure of the implications of either, but would like any advice or pointers to docs on 
the subject.

Thanks in advance
Robert.

Robert Crossley 
Robert Crossley & Associates
9 Short St
New Brighton NSW 2483
AUSTRALIA

P: 02 6680 1309
F: New Connection
M: 0419 718 642
E: robert at wotzhere.com