WMS/WFS and (yearly) time-dependent data

[Yewondwossen Assefa]

Hi There,

  The wms interface allows vendor specific parameters to be passed back 
in the capabilities docuement (and also be part of a request such as 
GetMap). I do not think there is a way to make custom parameters 
available out of the box from mapserver cgi and map file.
  I guess one of the things that is possible in is to use mapscript and 
the Wxs service (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/wxs_mapscript). 
You could for example wrap up your service with Wxs and return messages 
to users what parametrs are needed. You could also modify the capability 
document returned and insert the vendor specfic information that you want.
Hope it helps.

Later,




Stefan Schwarzer wrote:
>>> I am not (or better: hardly) working with raster data. All vector 
>>> data. National statistics for the whole world, like population 
>>> density, gdp, forest cover etc.
>>> So, the each one of the 1000 or so (postgres) tables looks like this:
>>> id     1970      1971   ....    2006
>>> 1        23.1        35.4   ....    45.6
>>> 2        12.3        10.9   ....    4.23
>>> ...
>>> 249 .....
>>> and each id is then linked to another (postgis) table with the 
>>> country names and the geometry.
>>
>>  I think in this case the the wms time would not be a use for you.
>>  I think one possibility to look at would be to use the  run time 
>> substitution of Mapserver 
>> (http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/runsub) .  You might be able 
>> to achieve that by using variables in an sql statement (that is part 
>> of the DATA value of your postgis layer) and have these variables 
>> substituted according to values in the request
> 
> Just one question: how resp. where do/can/should I specify that 
> additional parameters, so that the user knows that "year" has to be 
> added to the parameters' list? And that it shows it in the 
> GetCapabilitites?
> 


-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Assefa Yewondwossen
Software Analyst

Email: assefa at dmsolutions.ca
http://www.dmsolutions.ca/

Phone: (613) 565-5056 (ext 14)
Fax:   (613) 565-0925
----------------------------------------------------------------