MAPSERVER-USERS Digest - 9 Jul 2005 to 10 Jul 2005 (#2005-197)

[John Bonk]

 >-John Bonk writes:
 >>
 >> 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?

 >Hi John,
 >
  > I haven't used it but Mapserver has some support for temporal 
REQUESTS
 > This might mean you only need to have 2 layers
 > http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/doc44/wms-time-support-howto.html
 >
 > Although primarily a 1.3 WMS there is some discussion about 1.1 WMS
 > time support in the docs for this server
 > http://aes.gsfc.nasa.gov/documents/overview.html
 >
 > Not exactly sure how this would be set up for UMN MapServer though
 >
 > Hopefully someone more knowlegable will chime in on this
 >
 > HTH
 >
 > Norman

 Norman,

  Thanks for the suggestion. I read the doc on time support. I got the 
impression that the document addresses the situation where all the time 
periods are included in one file. Will someone please correct me if I 
am wrong about this?

  I'm toying with the idea of creating a GetCapabilities doc outside the 
context the mapserver, with the two layers and a time time range as you 
suggest above. A cgi script would create a map object using map script. 
But my understanding of mapscript capabilities is, at this point,l very 
weak so I don't know how feasible this is.

  I may have to start with something considerably simpler and work my 
way toward this.

 Thanks for the link to aes. I think it may prove to be helpful.

 John