[Mapserver-users] PostGIS subselect & where'd the data go?

[Paul Ramsey]

Charlton Purvis wrote:
> Thanks, Jan.  I understand what you're saying, but by the same
> reasoning, why DOES
>   DATA "the_geom from se_bethy"
> return all the fields?  After all, the_geom is just a column.

Very much a matter of design and intent. Our first PostGIS connector for 
mapserver has a simple design goals "visualize a spatial table". The 
simplest way to express that was "the_geometry_column from the_table". 
This was all well and good until we started also supporting arbitrary 
SQL. Now our original ad hoc data string was confusingly similar to SQL 
syntax.

We are thinking of moving to a SQL-only system for DATA strings in the 
next version, since that will make the whole thing alot more consistent.


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      | Paul Ramsey
      | Refractions Research
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