Animating Dynamic Data with MapServer Layers.

[Owens, Ryan J NWD02 CONTRACTOR]

Hello List,

I am working with MapServer and Flash.  MapServer will obviously generate the
prescribed maps, and Flash will be the application that makes the maps
viewable on the Web.  I am pulling data from shape files and from Oracle
Spatial databases.  My ultimate goal is to create a map with selectable
attributes (onClick and/or rollOver) to animate various aspects of the map
(such as water levels, nesting locations, and so on.)

I know what I want to do (and I hope I explained it sufficiently above), but
I don't know how to go about it.  I need to find a way to import the data
from the Oracle Spatial databases (which will be through MapServer map files)
and to query (in a sense) the data in Flash to dynamically generate a Flash
animation.  Does this make sense so far?

I've devised two possible solutions to my problem:
1. Generate a map file that would have, for example, twelve layers that would
query (through Oracle Spatial) for twelve months worth of forecasted water
levels on a certain part of the river.  Each layer (query) would return a
date (month) and a forecasted water level.  Some how I would take these
results and dynamically put them into Flash ActionScript that would
ultimately generate an animation.

2. Generate a map file that would have, for example, one layer that would
query (through Oracle Spatial) for all of the data at once.  Than I would be
able to some how sort and sift through the data in the returned layer to pull
out data that I wanted, which in turn would create the dynamic animation.

I guess what I am asking for is... whether either of these concepts will
work.  I'm not asking for advice on the animation part, but only on pulling
the data from the various Oracle Spatial databases.

Anyone have any advice?  Does this make sense?

Thanks for your time.
Ryan
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