Drawing a route

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Coppens, Gary J. wrote:
> Please bear with me, I have been working with Mapserver 2 weeks.  I need 
> to draw a route that follows a road or highway.  I have been asked to 
> develop an app that will track carriers' shipments. 

Tracking it very different from planning. Tracking implies a GPS like 
device that records the current location of the shipment and assuming 
you have collected that information then it is straight forward to 
display it as a virtual data layer over a base map using mapserver.

> So if they have a 
> load going from Green Bay, WI to Minneapolis, MN they want to see a line 
> drawn between the two cities that would follow a major road.

In this case you need to calculate the route first (planning), which 
would have to be done by some other software or service. Where2getit.com 
offers commercial services that does this, I'm sure there are others 
also. There has been mentioned on this list pgDijkstra which might be a 
solution, but I haven't use it.

At any rate, after you compute your route then you should be able to 
extract the polyline segments to draw the route on your map.

-Steve W

> Any ideas?
>  
> Thanks
> Gary
>  
> Gary Coppens
> WaterMark Software, LTD
> gary.coppens at gapac.com <mailto:gary.coppens at gapac.com>
> w:920.438.2477
> gary.coppens at watermarksoftware.com 
> <mailto:gary.coppens at watermarksoftware.com>
> c:920.737.1299
>