[mapserver-users] help with converting Geoserver site to Mapserver

[Kralidis,Tom [Ontario]]

You might want to check the WMS Server howto doc, as well as the MapServer OGC Web Services workshop (http://ms-ogc-workshop.maptools.org/), which has examples of standing up WMS/WFS/WCS/SOS, etc.

>From the client side, you would have to change the base URL of the new WMS (assuming the layer names would be the same).

..Tom


-----Original Message-----
From: mapserver-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org on behalf of Justin Bailey
Sent: Tue 09-Dec-08 12:03
To: mapserver-users at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [mapserver-users] help with converting Geoserver site to Mapserver
 
Hi list,

I hope I can get some assistance on a matter of some urgency.  Our organization has been putting the finishing touches on an application that is supposed to be released by the end of the year.  Unexpectedly, it did not pass license review, because it used Geoserver, which is GPL-licensed.  Since Mapserver has a more permissive license, and is also WMS-compatible, the decision was made to switch to Mapserver.  It now falls to me, as the junior developer, to do a last-minute switchover.  Unfortunately I come to this task knowing nothing about either Geoserver *or* Mapserver.

After some difficulty I succeeded in getting Mapserver running on our existing Tomcat server, but I have not been able to figure out how to convert the Geoserver data.  I have made some encouraging steps on the Mapserver tutorial but I still know nothing about Geoserver, and I am running out of time.  I need to solve this problem by the end of this week if possible, or by the end of next week at the absolute latest.


So, I have two questions:

1) Is there a utility I could download that can convert a Geoserver installation to Mapserver?

-- or --

2) I *think* (crossing fingers) that the only thing I need to do, on the application side, is to convert the following Javascript call...

var wms = new OpenLayers.Layer.WMS("World", "geoserver/wms?service=wms", {layers: 'countries', bgcolor: 0x000055});

...into its equivalent Mapserver call.  There are four countries.* files in the geoserver repository:

countries.dbf
countries.prj
countries.shp
countries.shx

How do I create countries.map to serve these files, and what mapserv.exe call should I use?


Many thanks for any and all assistance.

Justin