[Mapserver-users] [gis newbie] Using my own data.

[Nico Alberti]

Hi everybody.

This is not exaclty a Mapserver related question, but instead a request
for help understanding the basics of GIS information. Sorry about it.

I just set up a test installation of Mapserver and it seems it is working
fine with the tutorial data provided.

The problem is that now I would like to try to publish my own data but, as
I have no knowledge of the GIS world I am stuck simply trying to make
Mapserver see a simple shp|dbf|shx set of files using the most basic
template in the Tutorial. It seems that I need to give mapserver the
correct value for the EXTENT and most of all for the projection data. For
the first one I tried to use the "ogrinfo" utility as suggested in the
tutorial, but I noticed, for example, that the values it gives feeding it
with the tutorial data are different from those used in the corrisponding
.map . Anyway using "ogrinfo" output in the EXTENT clause of my .map file
makes mapserver builing only a blank image.

And about the projection issue I am helpless. Does some Esri program (that
I can not access at this time) provide this kind of information?

I also tried to use some helper application like MapServer Workbenck but,
even if the vector data are correctly displayed in MsShapeExplorer, the
corresponding .map file has errors in it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance and sorry for
my poor English.

-- 
Ciao
Nico