[Mapserver-users] MapServer 3.7 and STYLE

[Daniel Morissette]

Tom.Kralidis at ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca wrote:
> 
> Doesn't look like it, but that would be great!  One can define multiple
> styles in MapServer, which get propagated to the Capabilities statement, for
> use in GetMap requests.
> 
> Perhaps Daniel has something to say here, given MapServer's forthcoming
> support for SLD.
> 

Well, I had not really thought about it, and now that you ask I'm not
sure that mapping MapServer styles to OGC named styles in capabilities
would work out of the box.  As things stand now, I believe you can or
should eventually be able to have styles at the map level that you refer
to by name in your class definitions (is this supported yet?).  However,
all your styles for your whole map are defined together at the map
level, there is nothing that tells you which style is valid for which
layer.  OTOH, in WMS, named styles are per layer, not per server, so it
wouldn't make sense to advertize all your named styles (defined at the
top-level of your mapfile) in every layer of your WMS capabilities.  You
would end up advertizing point styles for line layers, etc.  Makes
sense?

Perhaps the solution to this would be a "wms_styles" metadata in WMS
servers that would be used to specify the list of style names that are
valid for each individual layer (and make MapServer advertize them in
capabilities).  Then we would have to modify the WMS interface to accept
the STYLES WMS parameter and when it is used then use the corresponding
named style in the mapfile.

Would that sound like a proper solution?  If yes then perhaps you can
file the above in bugzilla.  ;)


BTW, I wouldn't call the above "SLD support" ... this is just supporting
named STYLES in WMS GetMap and GetCapabilities.  To me, SLD support is
about making MapServer able to understand SLD definitions (i.e. accept
SLD defn from clients in server mode), and making it able to produce a
SLD definition for a given class (i.e. forward the class information
from the client mapfile to the remote WMS server in client mode).  Did I
miss something?

Daniel
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
 Daniel Morissette               morissette at dmsolutions.ca
 DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
------------------------------------------------------------