[Mapserver-users] MapServer - is this possible?

[Sean Gillies]

On Monday, August 11, 2003, at 09:24  AM, Geoffrey Rowland wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm new to using MapServer, and have a couple of questions.  I have 
> some data stored in a MySQL database, state, county, and then a number 
> (which is related to the county).  Now what I want to do is have 
> MapServer display an ArcView shapefile of the United States (county 
> level), and then use PHP + MapScript to query the database and then 
> color each county based on what the number is in the database. Is that 
> possible?
>
Yes.

However, you say that the "number" is related to the county ... since
counties are (mostly) static, that means the number is static.  Yes?
Get your data out of MySQL and into the shapefile's attributes or into
another DBF that you can join to the county shapefile using MapServer,
and you'll have much better performance.

Or move from the shapefile + ancillary MySQL table to PostGIS
(http://postgis.refractions.net).

cheers,
Sean

--
Sean Gillies
sgillies at frii dot com
http://www.frii.com/~sgillies