Serving many shapefiles through WFS

[Kralidis,Tom [Burlington]]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: UMN MapServer Users List 
> [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On Behalf Of Maarten Plieger
> Sent: 19 October, 2007 5:44 AM
> To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
> Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] Serving many shapefiles through WFS
> 
> 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.
> 

If you're serving observations, you might want to consider MapServer's
OGC Sensor Observation Service (SOS) support.

> 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?
>

WFS 1.0.0 doesn't support the TIME parameter natively.

SOS supports eventtime as part of the GetObservation operation.

I've setup a dummy TILEINDEX'd dataset and have tried a GetObservation
request:

(tests are doing using trunk):

http://devgeo.cciw.ca/cgi-bin/mapserv/sostest?service=SOS&version=1.0.0&
request=GetObservation&offering=Water&observedproperty=WaterQuality&resp
onseFormat=text/xml;%20subtype=om/0.0.0

http://devgeo.cciw.ca/cgi-bin/mapserv/sostest?service=SOS&version=1.0.0&
request=GetObservation&offering=Water&observedproperty=test_op&responseF
ormat=text/xml;%20subtype=om/0.0.0&eventtime=%3Cgml:TimePeriod%3E%3Cgml:
beginPosition%3E2001-07-11%3C/gml:beginPosition%3E%3Cgml:endPosition%3E2
007-07-13%3C/gml:endPosition%3E%3C/gml:TimePeriod%3E

...which renders no results, but it should.  I will look further into
this.

..Tom




> Thanks in advance,
> Maarten Plieger
>