[Mapserver-users] Large Map Files

[Lowther, David W]

ABSOLUTELY. That would be so very useful.

Dave

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Ramsey [mailto:pramsey at refractions.net] 
> Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 1:03 PM
> To: Jan Hartmann
> Cc: mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
> Subject: Re: [Mapserver-users] Large Map Files
> 
> 
> I have been thinking that an extremely powerful extension to the .map 
> file would be an "INCLUDE" directive, which reads a map file fragment 
> into another map file.  A quick-and-dirty map service could then be 
> assembled with:
> 
> MAP
>    INCLUDE standard-headers.map
>    INCLUDE standard-basemap-layers.map
>    LAYER
>      NAME myspeciallayer
>      DATA blah
>      TYPE polygon
>    END
> END
> 
> The FME does this in its mapping files, for example. The 
> first stage of 
> processing is to replace all INCLUDE lines with their referenced 
> content. It recursively does this up to a max number of loops.
> 
> For people maintaining alot of different map services, it could be a 
> real boon. (Your parcel postgis database is now on a new 
> server? Change 
> the *one* parcel layer definition, and all the maps which 
> reference it 
> are now up-to-date.)
> 
> P.
> 
> Jan Hartmann wrote:
> > Just my personal view, but isn't this problem of too many 
> classes (or
> > layers) perhaps caused by using a MapFile in two different 
> ways: as a 
> > generator of a single layered map, and as a repository of 
> all available 
> > map layers? I can hardly imagine a single map with more than fifty 
> > classes or one hundred layers. What people seem to do is 
> putting every 
> > GIS file they have in a single MapFile and turning layers 
> on and off as 
> > needed. As every layer needs its own classes, the maximum 
> number of 50 
> > is very soon reached, even if only a small part of these 
> will be ever 
> > used in any actual map.
> 
> -- 
>        __
>       /
>       | Paul Ramsey
>       | Refractions Research
>       | Email: pramsey at refractions.net
>       | Phone: (250) 885-0632
>       \_
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Mapserver-users mailing list
> Mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu 
> http://lists.gis.umn.edu/mailman/listinfo/maps> erver-users
>