Architecture for Enterprise Backend

[Shoaib Burq]

Hi

I have a question which I am have difficulty putting in words but I'll
try anyway...

Can anyone suggest how large data vendors organise their raster and
vector data with the view of having the flexibility to update,
reorganise, manage and search/query. How can this process be automated
using the various OS GIS components (e.g. PostGIS, Mapserver, etc).
Are data sets divide into categories. How does one deal with temporal
variability over the same extents? Is their an ideal way of organising
the data on disk? How should the various mapserver components like
Mapfiles be organised internally and on disk? Understandably it could
get very ugly as data increases.