New to GIS

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hello Anthony,

Mapserver does not support Geocoding, turning a address into a lat,long 
and it does not support Routing/Driving Directions. Each of these is a 
significant application unto themselves. Mapserver does maps as its name 
implies. There are various solutions around for geocoding that might be 
adapted to your needs. See http://geocoder.us and http://imaptools.com

There is some support for routing that works with PostGIS but I'm not 
sure how large a data set it can handle or whether it will handle turn 
restrictions if you need that.

More below ...

Anthony Brown wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am very new to the world of GIS, infact two days ago I didn't know what it
> stood for...
> 
> However, I have a project I want to get done and I have spent a lot of time
> reading over the past couple of days and I now know what GIS stands for,
> along with a few other things.
> This might not be the best place to post the question but here it goes:
> 
> I want to make an application that can print out a route on a map of how to
> get from address A to address B. I have talked to companies that sell data I
> would need, address info, along with roading info (one way streets etc) but
> I wouldn't know where to start to actually make the application. 
> 
> I have got mapserver installed and running, I tried following the tutorial
> but can't find out where to download the examples.

http://ms.gis.umn.edu is the new mapserver site and it should have links 
to the tutorial and examples.

> The technology looks like something I could learn and I am willing to put in
> the time reading manuals, tutorials, and reading case studies, but I would
> like some help narrowing down the materials I need to cover.
> 
> Specifically this application will need to run online, possibly using
> something like kamap.
> It will need to work from mapinfo files (mid/mif, tab) because thats the
> format I can get the data in.

GDAL/OGR will convert data from mapinfo to shapefiles

> Maybe these files can be put into a PostgreSQL database, i have seen the
> postGIS word floating around a few sites.
> It will be a New Zealand data set, starting with the major cities.

Sounds like a fun project

> Any ideas?

Start with maps and making them look good and run fast in mapserver, 
then look at geocoding. If you want to roll your own, then you might 
look at loading the street data into PostGIS and writing SQL queries to 
lookup streets and address ranges for geocoding. There are 3-4 examples 
of geocoder written in PostGIS/postgres stored procedures that you also 
might adapt to your needs. And finally look into the routing as it will 
require totally different data structures to solve the graph problem of 
routing and driving direction.

-Stephen Woodbridge
  http://imaptools.com

> Thankyou
> :Anthony Brown
> 
> BICT (Bachelor of Information and Communication Technology)
> http://www.webchalk.co.nz
>