[Mapserver-users] What doesn't MapServer do?

[Arnulf Christl]

Hi,
cool summary!. Nothing much to add - except that all this information 
could be published at a more prominent level, presumably the homepage?
What it boils down to is that MapServer is one very essential basic 
component for building spatial data infrastructures, which are currently 
replacing the traditional single GIS box. Use PostgreSQL/PostGIS at the 
data level, MapServer as rendering engine, choose between udig, qgis, 
jump, etc. for desktop apps, add a deegree gazetteer, reproject with 
PROJ, convert with OGR2OGR, do transactional WFS with deegree or 
GeoServer (all on the same data), analyze and do whatever else I might 
have forgotten with GRASS GIS.
So the question would rather be "What else beside MapServer do you need 
to do xxx?". Whatever it is, you will find it out there. If it is good, 
tell us about it.

Cheers, Arnulf.

ANDY CANFIELD wrote:

> I think also a lot of people expect desktop style GIS functionality 
> and that warning is simply there to let them know that it is web 
> mapping engine not a desktop GIS system. If you need desktop GIS as an 
> open source solution you can always use GRASS it's home page is here: 
> http://grass.itc.it/
>
> Geocoding was the only web mapping thing I needed at first in my app 
> to do that Mapserver didn't do natively. I simply wrote an add-in for 
> php in C that does the geocoding part. So when I load the 
> php_mapscript .dll I also load my goecoding engine .dll. It ended up 
> working very well. It uses GDT data from shapefiles, it wouldn't take 
> much to scale it to use a MySql backend as an alternative to 
> shapefiles. So far for me adding php extensions in C to tack on the 
> extra functionality seems to run much quicker than when I wrote the 
> same thing directly in php. So every add-on since then I have done as 
> a php extension .dll in C.
>
> The point being that Mapserver is really an engine, you build an app 
> on top of or beside that engine.
>
> I have used the proprietary solutions also like ESRI's ArcIMS and 
> MapInfo's MapXtreme. As with Mapserver they are engines you build your 
> app on top of them just like with Mapserver. And speaking from 
> personal experience the Mapserver API and php mapscript API is way, 
> way, way easier to implement and use than MapXtreme's Java edition and 
> ArcIMS was also dog slow compared to Mapserver. Mapserver and 
> MapXtreme Java seem to run about the same speed to me.
>
> However just to give you an example of what you save with Mapserver, I 
> have roughly 1,400 users of my web apps using Mapserver behind our 
> company firewall (intranet). MapXtreme was what we used for some other 
> solutions at a corporate level in the past cost us $150,000+ for that 
> number of users. The current Mapserver solutions are at a market level 
> not an enterprise level but they ended up having the same amount of 
> users due to the nature of the apps. So we saved $150,000+ on the 
> Mapserver apps.
>
> What Mapinfo won't tell you until they give you fifty million sales 
> pitches is the price of MapXtreme. So I'll save you the trouble and 
> let you know up front. It's $360 per user plus a mandatory $72 dollar 
> per user maintenance fee. Those are in US dollars. Free with a bit 
> less functionality out of the box which you can add yourself or 
> $150,000+ and either way you still build the app on top of either engine.
>
> I can tell you this much we'll never use MapXtreme at a market level 
> and there is a very strong case being made to port the existing 
> enterprise solutions to Mapserver and drop MapXtreme totally.
>
> I don't know how much the ArcIMS stuff cost because I started 
> developing at my current employer after those had been written. But I 
> would guess it's roughly the same as MapXtreme as they are competing 
> solutions.
>
> So in my personal opinion "what doesn't Mapserver do?" absolutely 
> nothing you can't add if it doesn't have it already, most of which it 
> does. My two cents anyway.
> Thanks,
> Andy
>
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