[Mapserver-users] SDE Direct Connect

[Jean-Francois.Doyon at CCRS.NRCan.gc.ca]

Liz,

The Arc clients do provide that flexibility, though I don't think you can do
that right now with MapServer.

The main problem is that the underlying organization of data (i.e. SDE table
structure) doesn't lend itself to that kind of access without the client
explicitly understanding it, which mapserver natively wouldn't ...

If you really wanted you could do something like use PHP/MapScript to read
the data directly out of Oracle, and then put it into a format MapScript
understands and so on, but that's probably much slower than just using the
SDE service !!

As a general rule MapServer's SDE support is fairly basic ... It only reads
basic tables and so on ... If for example you use more advanced features
such as geodatabases, you can no longer really use MapServer with SDE
(That's what I was told by someone who looked at that at least ...)

As a general idea it might be nice to look at expanding MapServer support
for SDE to be more aware of some SDE specific features, such as GeoDatabases
and the direct connect feature ... We'd have to find out whether the latest
Client SDK provides the necessary functionality and look at adding mapserver
support for it.  What you've found about "sde:oracle" suggests that at least
part of the funcitonality is probably there, but mapserver doesn't work with
it nicely ...

But I'm pretty sure the short answer right now is that you can't do it :)

J.F.

-----Original Message-----
From: mapserver-users-admin at lists.gis.umn.edu
[mailto:mapserver-users-admin at lists.gis.umn.edu]On Behalf Of Liz Godwin
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 11:24 AM
To: mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
Subject: [Mapserver-users] SDE Direct Connect


Hello,

Is it possible to connect directly to SDE through mapserver, or only to
the the sde service?  I have tried playing with the connection string in
my map file, but to no avail.  

I have heard that a direct connection is faster than a service
connection, that is why I would like to try this.

In the SDE config/tuning guide for Oracle, it suggests I use
"sde:oracle" as my service, instead of "esri_sde " for a direct
connection.
My connection string in my map file: 
"<hostname>,sde:oracle,<database>,<user>,<password>"  (all <parameters>
filled in)
My error:  msSDELayerOpen(): SDE error. SE_connection_create(): The
file path does not exist, or is too long (> 512 chars), or has invalid
characters.. (-269)

This error suggests to me that the SDE handler in Mapserver doesn't
like the colon.  Is this a bug, or is it just not possible for a direct
connection?

Thanks!!

Liz Godwin



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