[mapserver-users] How best to serve very large (300GB) raster data?

[John Callahan]

I've been using ESRI products for quite a while.  To serve a very large 
raster dataset I have (about 300 GB), or really any raster or vector, I 
usually just load the data into ArcSDE installed on Oracle and server 
through ArcIMS.  However, I want to move away from ESRI/Oracle and into a 
more open environment, with all components being open source if possible.

How best to serve a large raster dataset of about 300 GB?  My data is in 
2010 tiles, each a 3-band TIF of about 135 MB.

>From my initial research, I like what MapServer can do and all of the 
potential clients (OpenLayers, ka-Map, and many more.)  I also really like 
PostGIS for vectors...and have already started a project with PostGIS 
points, being maintained by Quantum GIS and mapped through Google Maps 
Javascript API and some AJAX/PHP code I wrote.  My biggest worry is dealing 
with the very large rasters.

Ideally, a tile server would be nice but I don't want to create the tiles 
through an ESRI product (like Arc2Earth or HTMLImageMapper.)  I really like 
the possibility of TileCache (http://www.tilecache.org/) working with 
MapServer.  The immediate question is what would be the raster data source 
to MapServer?   Should I create tiles inside each TIF using gdal_translate 
and then a shapefile tileindex?  Maybe go with compressed JPGs instead of 
TIFs since they usually have much smaller file sizes?  I'm not sure where 
to start.

Thanks for any guidance you can offer.

- John



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John Callahan
Geospatial Application Developer
Delaware Geological Survey
University of Delaware
227 Academy St, Newark DE 19716-7501
Tel: (302) 831-2833
Email: john.callahan at udel.edu
http://www.dgs.udel.edu
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