[Mapserver-users] getFeatureInfo on dynamic layer -emptyexception

[Frieso ter Haseborg]

>The right way to do that would be to use WFS GetFeature 
>requests instead 
>of GetFeatureInfo, but this is still fairly new territory and 
>some parts 
>are still under development in MapServer 4.1.
That's the point, why I tried to avoid a WFS-implementation.

>Anyway, the idea is that you would configure your server as both a WMS 
>and a WFS. Then issue a DescribeLayer request to your WMS which would 
>return you a reference to a WFS layer.  Then your client builds a 
>GetFeature request for the WFS layer which could possibly be cascaded 
>through multiple WFS servers.
AFAIK MS 4.0 does not support the DescribeLayer-request. And I fear it's
no prompt alternative, but will MS 4.1 do? If so, just as a prospect:
What's the space of time we're talking about regarding the release of MS
4.1, is there a approximate forecast? Are we talking about months or
weeks?

>Perhaps you need to rethink your servers architecture to 
>connect to the 
>servers directly instead of cascading.  Using MapServer as a 
>WMS client 
>is OK, but doing multiple levels of cascading is not a good idea since 
>it slows things down and increses the chances of problems.
We try to implement a ogc-compliant wms-server, serving dynamic layers
which shall be accessible by other wms-servers. Let's call it a
one-level-cascade, I didn't meant any deeper cascading.

>getWMSFeatureInfoURL() operates only on WMS layers (i.e. 
>CONNECTIONTYPE 
>WMS) and will produce a GetFeatureInfo url that you can use to connect 
>to this server.
>[...]
>It's hard to explain in a few lines, but hopefully you get the idea.
Thanx, in the meantime I managed to get a working sample. So I would get
a new URL which fires a getFeatureInfo-request against my php-component.
This way I could extend my client to put the desired request through to
my php. But this wouldn't work for a direct wms-request from an other
mapserver, right? Or - just a thought - is there possibly any way to
specify an alternative url processed on getFeatureInfo-requests I could
specify in the mapfile? This way I could initialize the request and
would not have to rely on the cascade I use for getMap.

TIA,
Frieso