A total beginner's question

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Bernard de Bono wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Having absolutely no experience with GIS, I was encouraged to read about
> mapserver's connectivity with MySQL and Perl, and have just installed the
> latest source code, and look forward to testing the server.
>
> Is there a simple guide available that does not assume any GIS background? I
> still need some basic questions answered, such as:
>
> 1) Is map data (i.e. maps of countries) freely available? Is that a separate
> download?

There is lots of data freely available, check out sites like
freegis.org, www.esri.com, google for "shapefile download"

> 2) Is the impression that Mapserver uses MySQL to store data correct? What
> type of information is stored on MySQL, and why was there no reference to
> MySQL accounts during compilation?

While Mapserver has some connection to MySQL, it is not the most mature,
but a lot of people are using Perl or PHP to store data in MySQL and to
render it via mapscript. Mapserver supports lots of data formats, it
supports lots of raster and vector formats. My preference is vector data
and I use shapefiles, Topozone.com uses both raster and vector but is
predominately raster. It all depends on what you want to do.

> 3) MapScript: is there documentation for it? Has it been downloaded with the
> server source package?

there is lots of documentation on the mapserver website, you probably
need to know that there are different flavors of mapscript like PHP,
Perl, Python, Java to name a few.

> Any pointers as to how to get up to speed with Mapserver would be most
> appreciated.

The learning curve is a little steep, but the community with help you
through it. Most people start with the demo application and then try to
change that to use their own data that they have downloaded from somewhere.

There is also a wiki that has a lot of examples of mapscript and other
howtos, but it was getting spammed and has been locked, so it may be
getting a little stale over time.

One thing on list edicate, please remember to reply all so messages go
back to the list. There are a lot of people that can help, and can learn
from your questions and the respective answers.

-Steve W.