[mapserver-users] enhancement ideas

[Joan Verdaguer]

Hi list, 

Here are some features I think would be nice to have in Mapserver: 

** Expressions almost everywhere ** 
Possibility to use expressions whenever a value is required. 
Built-in variables and functions would be very useful. 
For example: 
   SIZE [fieldValue]*0.2+5 
   WIDTH imageWidth / 200.0  # imageWidth is a built-in variable containing the map width in pixels 
   SIZE min(5, [fieldValue]/100) # minimum function 
   TEXT upperCase([fieldValue])  # get upper case value of a text field 
   TEXT if([fieldValue] = "-", "Yes", "No") # "if then else" expression 
   COLOR rampColor([fieldValue],0,10000)  # get a color in a ramp for a numeric field normalized to a range 

** Finer grained concurrency locks ** 
Especially in OGR. Currently Mapscript (Java or .NET) is not an efficient option on a webserver accessing OGR: web requests are practically serialized by the locks. 
I think thread safety was improved in latest version of GDAL/OGR, am I wrong? 
Adopting RFC15 would be great news! 

**  Facilities for tiles ** 
Given the big performance boost of using map tiles, I think it would be very useful an utility (or API) for pregenerating tiles of a map for a given area and level. 
I am aware of the existence of TileCache but I think it would be interesting to have this utility. 

** Multiple geometry types on a layer ** 
Currently, a layer only admits one geometry type (point, line, polygon). Some sources, especially CAD datasets via OGR, 
contain different geometry types. Would be useful and efficient to have all geometries shown in the same layer. 
Different styling rules may be needed to display different geometry types in the same layer. 

Joan


       
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