Does MapServer work with Reverse Proxy? (MapServer as backend webserver)

[kreshna_iceheart at yahoo.com]

Er, pardon my dumb question again, but I'm a newbie in
Reverse Proxy as well, so....

Supposed I have two webservers: Server A and Server B.
Server A is the public accessible webserver. Server B,
on the other hand, is the "back end" webserver.
MapServer is installed in server B, but the maps are
to be public accessible. Thus, anyone browsing the
maps through the internet actually accesses the maps
in Server B through Server A.

In the scenario above, Server A acting as "Reverse
Proxy" where public are accessing Server B from the
internet through Server A, am I correct?

I just wonder; will MapServer work with such scenario
above? I'm a newbie in Reverse Proxy as well, but IIRC
Reverse Proxy works by translating the URL belongs to
Server B to Server A's URL.

For example, the URL to access MapServer in Server B
is
http://www.server-b.net/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=C:\mapfiles\map01.map&layer=All&mode=map.

However, people from the internet do not access Server
B directly, but they access it through Server A (the
Reverse Proxy) instead, where http://www.server-b.net/
is mapped to, let say, http://www.server-a.com/maps/

Am I correct up to this point?


Now, I'm actually concerned about the cgi-bin part,
because it accesses the map file using local storage
folder instead of URL. A notorious example is
"/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=C:\mapfiles\map01.map".

If the URL is translated to proxy server, the URL
appears to the people accessing the map from the
internet should be like this:
http://www.server-a.com/maps/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=C:\mapfiles\map01.map&layer=All&mode=map.

because www.server-b.net is translated to
www.server-a.com/maps.

Am I correct to this point?


If my assumption above is true, then I wonder how does
MapServer work through reverse proxy, then, because
C:\mapfiles\map01.map actually resides in Server B
instead of Server A. Furthermore, the
/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe that calls the map01.map file
also resides in Server B instead of Server A.


So again, I really wonder: does MapServer work with
Reverse Proxy? Furthermore, does it need special rules
in referencing the folders and files? Anyone ever
tried MapServer as backend webserver before?

Many thanks,
-Kresh


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