MapServer Binaries with SDE support?

[Peter.VonGaza]

Hi Brock,

Thanks for you information.

I installed the files from the zip. The readme.txt says to go to
www.fastcgi.com to get mod_fastcgi.so. The only file that I could
Find was in the "old" directory:

http://www.fastcgi.com/dist/old/mod_fastcgi-2.4.0-AP2.so

So I just grab that and renamed it "mod_fastcgi.so". Is there
Another file somewhere else?

At the command prompt "mapserv -v" gives me:
MapServer version 4.5 OUTPUT=GIF OUTPUT=PNG OUTPUT=JPEG SUPPORTS=PROJ
SUPPORTS=FREETYPE SUPPORTS=WMS_SERVER SUPPORTS=WMS_CLIENT
SUPPORTS=WFS_SERVER SUPPORTS=WFS_CLIENT SUPPORTS=FASTCGI INPUT=SDE
INPUT=OGR INPUT=GDAL INPUT=SHAPEFILE DEBUG=MSDEBUG

Looks OK to me.

My old MapServer apps come up fine, but I still can't display an ArcSDE
Layer. How do I tell if it my connection string or something else. I
Figure it must be my connection string. I am trying something like this:

  LAYER
    NAME "SDE URN"
    STATUS ON
    DATA "BASEA.URN,SHAPE,SDE.DEFAULT"
    TYPE LINE
    CONNECTIONTYPE SDE
    CONNECTION "mysde.gov.yk.ca,port:5151,sde,username,password"
    UNITS METERS
    SIZEUNITS PIXELS
    CLASS
      NAME "SDE Roads"
      STYLE
        SYMBOL 0
        OUTLINECOLOR 0 255 0
        SIZE 1
        MINSIZE 1
        MAXSIZE 100
      END
    END
  END

The only variable that could be wrong is "sde". We leave the Database
Field blank when connecting in ArcCatalog. I've tried "null", ' ', and
"sde". Where to I start? How do I tell if I am hitting our ArcSDE?

Thanks,
Peter


Brock Anderson wrote:

> You can download Win32 binaries for Mapserver with SDE and FastCGI
> support here:

> ftp://ftp.refractions.net/pub/refractions/mapserver/mapserver4.4.zip

> There is a readme file in the archive that should help you set it up.
> Let me know if you run into trouble.

> Brock Anderson

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

> Paul Ramsey wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
> On 12-Jan-05, at 5:47 PM, Peter.VonGaza wrote:
>
>> Do you have any recommendations on how I should set things up? I am
>> not a MapServer expert - I just know the basics. What exactly is
>> fastcgi and are
>> there any precompiled binaries available? I've just downloaded the
>> binaries
>> that Assefa pointed me to:
>
>
> Once you get into database-backed data sources, the way Mapserver runs
> can become an issue. Mapserver is a CGI process, which means for every
> map request Mapserver goes through a complete startup, read config,
> generate map, shutdown cycle. There is no Mapserver process running
> between requests. For database data sources, that means Mapserver has
> to establish a connection for every individual map request.  It can
> take a long time to establish an SDE connection (in BC, we found
> between 1 and 2 seconds). That means 1-2 seconds are burned before the
> map even starts rendering.  That's pretty bad news if you want a fast
> map server, and as you have found in your testing, under the right
> conditions Mapserver is a very fast map server indeed.
>
> So what is the solution? What if Mapserver did not shut down after
> every map request? What if it stayed running, and maintained database
> connections between map requests? That would mean map requests would
> not have to pay a connection penalty to pull data out of ArcSDE,
> because the connection would already be there, waiting.
>
> This is what FastCGI does. It is a general purpose technology that
> allows programs with a high startup overhead (such as Mapserver
> connecting to ArcSDE) to stay running continuously, and provides a
> means for Apache to broker requests to the running processes.
>
> Brock will send you a message tomorrow with a link to precompiled
> windows binaries with FastCGI and ArcSDE support, and some Apache
> configuration snippets to run Mapserver in FastCGI mode.  If you are
> looking to demonstrate Mapserver performance against ArcSDE, you
> really have to use FastCGI.