netCDF.. in mapserver -how to?

[Frank Warmerdam]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 15:18:00 -0600, Confused <frstylrz at juno.com> wrote:
> I'm an absolute newbie in mapservers or this whole GIS realm in general.
> Lately I've posted quite a few, regarding setting up mapserver and gdal.
> Thanks to everyone that helped. At the moment, I've got MS4W 4.4.1 and all
> of their supplementary applications, found on www.maptools.org, running. I
> needed a GDAL tool as well, so I dl'd FWTools. My new task is getting a
> netCDF file to work with MS4W.. my question now is.. I have a netCDF file,
> how can I get it to work with MS4W? I apologize for sounding so broad with
> this questions, but I'm just the average entry-level IT guy. I just know
> basic computer hard/software things at the moment. I don't know anything
> about GIS or Mapservers, but I'm really trying hard to grasp these
> concepts. Please, if someone can point me in the right direction, that's
> great.

Confused,

NetCDF is a *very* flexible format.  Can you be more specific about the
nature of your netCDF file and how you want to use it?

There is limited support for NetCDF 2D (and 3D) arrays as grids in
GDAL if built with the netcdf libraries.  The latest FWTools builds on
linux and win32 should include this netCDF support, such as it is.

However, if you have data that you essentially want to treat as features
(ie, points, lines or polygons) then you are not going to be able to do
so directly.  You will need to translate with some external software.

Alternatively, one approach I have used is to publish the netCDF
data through the netCDF OPeNDAP server and consume that in
MapServer (via OGR).  That works though it is a bit complicated
to setup.

I would add that I doubt MS4W includes netCDF support and that
you can't mix and match DLLs between MS4W and FWTools.

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