Serving many shapefiles through WFS

[Maarten Plieger]

Hi all,
Maybe someone can help me out with this problem:
What is the best solution for serving thousands of shapefiles through a 
Web Feature Service?
These shapefiles are files with daily observations. Every day a new 
shapefile is generated and needs to be served.

Currently I make use of a script which reads the directory with the 
names of the shapefiles, this script creates for each shapefile a layer 
in the mapfile. This means that there is a layer for each shapefile, 
resulting in many layers. The disadvantage is that the map file will 
grow to infinite in time, because every day a new file is added to the 
mapfile.

In the case of a WMS, it is possible to make use of a TILEINDEX which 
contains the names of these shapefiles and their corresponding time/date 
of observation. With the WMS TIME parameter one can select the desired 
file. In this case only one layer is needed, the file with the TILEINDEX 
is the only thing that needs to be updated.

It seems that this is not possible with a Web Feature Service. Am i 
right with this?
So how can i serve all these shapefiles through WFS?

Thanks in advance,
Maarten Plieger