[Mapserver-users] MapServer, routing/driving directions, TIGER data

[Eric Ward]

MapServer users:

I have the following situation, and have some questions about MapServer:

Ok, so I run a food buying club and I want to make deliveries to the
customers homes, here in the State of Utah.  I want to find out, before
going, how many miles it is from my location to their location, and if
it would be easier to make two or more deliveries in one trip.

I downloaded the TIGER Line files for Utah, loaded them into a MySQL
database, and have perl script to quickly (.5 sec) find their lat/long
based on their street address (with city or zipcode).

Using basic geometry, I can find the distance between my lat/long and
their lat/long, but that distance is as the crow flies, not as the car
drives.

So, I need to use a router recursive algorithim to find the shortest
route of TIGER street vectors between the two points to get driving
directions.  Anyone have a good way to do this?

Does MapServer offer this functionality through any extensions or
anything?  Could I do the querying of the lat/long for an address from
MapServer with the TIGER in shp files, or should I continue having it in
a MySQL db?  In essence, is MapServer just for drawing maps via a CGI
interface,  or can it be queried for scalar information from the map
files it uses?

It seems to me that this is better done as such:

  1.  Use TIGER->MySQL information to find driving directions via the
      street vectors it contains, and to find lat/long of a street
      addie.

  2.  Use MapServer to plot the lat/long (once found in step 1) using
      the same TIGER info (just converted to shp files).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  The code I write will be GPL'ed
once I get it working.

Eric