[Mapserver-users] ArcIMS vs MapServer Functionality

[Dave McIlhagga]

Hi Brock,

This can be achieved with the latest versions of MapServer (v. 4.0) 
which is currently in Beta.  It has been re-designed to support the 
capacity to output data in one of a number of directly accessible data 
formats such as Shapefiles and MapInfo MITab files.

Of course, the exact manner in which this would happen is very 
application specific so work would have to be done in one of the 
scripting environments to allow the application to control the area of 
extraction you are interested in pulling out, the layers you want to 
receive, and the format you want to receive them in.

Another thing you may want to consider is the use of OGC specficiations 
which would then allow you to effectively extract data from any server 
that implements the web feature service (WFS) specification.  MapServer 
can act as a WFS client meaning that it can injest GML data from a 
remote server and convert it into the proprietary format of your choice 
that is supported by MapServer.

For that matter, the day *when* ESRI supports WFS as a client, you can 
publish your data through WFS and have your ESRI clients directly injest 
data this way.

Regarding HDF support, I believe MapServer supports this through the 
GDAL library -- you can get more information here:

http://www.remotesensing.org/gdal/


This is my understanding at least, the developers may correct or clarify 
this.

Dave
-- 
Dave McIlhagga
DM Solutions Group
http://www.dmsolutions.ca
EMail : mcilhagga at dmsolutions.ca
Phone : 613-565-5056 x15
Fax : 613-565-0925



Brock Murch wrote:
> List Members:
> 
> I am curious whether or not MapServer can supply data directly to a client 
> software (not browser) so that the MapServer served data can be applied 
> directly to a clients own data.
> 
> For example, with ArcMAP I can query a ArcIMS server and pull down the data to 
> my ArcMAP software running locally on my computer. Can this be done with 
> MapServer? If not to ArcMAP is it availible for other types of local clients? 
> Can MapServer use HDF files? I know that ESRI does not support them.
> 
> Our intended audience uses ESRI products extensively. They will most likely 
> want this functionality. We have to make a choice with this in mind. I for 
> one advocate the use of open software where ever possbible. This is one 
> instance where I may no be able to depending on the response to this query.
> 
> Thanks for any thoughts on the matter.
> 
>