Serving A Large Archive an openpap-client/wms-server

[Frank Warmerdam]

On 7/8/05, John Bonk <jpbonk at aol.com> wrote:
> We have a lot of data on an opendap server. We had plans for a
> MapServer opendap-client/wms-server--in other words we wanted to build
> a MapServer that will serve raster data from our opendap server.
> 
>   We were working on a prototype that will serve one of our products.
> The product consists of monthly files, each file contains 2 parameters
> per file. At present there are over 80 months (files) of data.
> 
>   I still consider myself a novice and may have some misconceptions
> about MapServer, but my understanding is that to offer this data I will
> need a mapfile with over 160 layers--one for each file times 2 for the
> 2 parameters.
> 
>   I read in one of the documents
> (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/doc44/mapfile-reference.html) that there
> is a 50 layer limit for a mapfile. The document said that this limit
> could be raised by making a change to map.h. However, some of our
> products have files containing over a hundred parameters. I estimate
> that if we wanted to offer each of the parameters in each file for
> several of our products, we would need a mapfile with hundreds of
> thousands layers. Are we expecting too much from mapserver?
> 
>  Is there any way around this problem?
> 
>   Does anyone have any suggestions for serving data that is scattered
> through thousands of files?

John,

I think it might make more sense to either produce map objects dynamically
using mapscript, or create one mapfile for each dataset to serve rather 
than trying to offer all the products through one master .map file.   

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent