[Mapserver-users] data/mapfile organization advice sought

[Puneet Kishor]

To ms data mavens -- please give me a piece of your mind.

I have shapefile data of several countries, about 14 countries.

Each country has 8 to 12 different layers, but they are all called the 
same. For example, all countries have a layer called "layer1", 
"layer2", and so on, while a few countries may not have "layer8" or 
"layer11," etc.

If I were to draw all the countries together, they would draw 
correctly, that is, they are in the correct geographic space. However, 
their data are self-contained. That is, even though country1 and 
country2 are contiguous, drawing country1 does not bring up country2... 
they are in different folders.

How do I create and work with their mapfiles?

I can't really have one big mongo mapfile with all the layers of all 
the countries... it would be unworkable, and probably very inefficient.

On the other hand, if I have 14 different mapfiles, they will be almost 
identical to each other except for the path to the data. If I make a 
tweak in any one mapfile (for example, change the color or visible 
scale of a layer), I will have to go and change it in 14 different 
mapfiles.

Ideally I would like to have one master mapfile (like a template), and 
just substitute (on the fly) the path to the data. I guess I could do 
some preprocessing with Perl, and swap a filter keyword using regexp 
search, to create a working, valid mapfile on the fly, but I would also 
have to account for those one or two particular layers that happen to 
be absent for a given country.

Please share your insight.

Many tia.

Puneet.