[mapserver-users] Mapserver equivalent for .NET

[Scott Ellington]

Hi,

I currently work at ISC and was asked to respond on this thread.

A few notes on some comments:

"That being said, I can still wish that they be more open and give
credit 
to MapServer for providing the core of their system, or perhaps spend 
some time on this list helping users, or do something/anhything for the 
project... for me it's a wish, not a requirement." --Daniel Morissette

Howard Butler brought up a lot of these issues a while back.  In terms of 
openness, I can honestly tell you that there is no intent to hide the fact
that mapserver does the map rendering in MDNS.  I am not a sales guy, but
I have been told that there are some local governments that don't want to
hear that you are using open source, so it's just not something that is pushed.

There have been some contributions however.  Howard would be the person to list 
all these out.  But I know that someone here wrote the MS SQL Server 2008 plugin.

"this definitely sounds interesting.
Are they using the mapscript api or are they going via CGI?
How are exactly using mapserver? (I wish i could see this by myself, but
looks at their site that there is not a downloadable demo of it)"  --Paolo Corti

MDNS uses mapscript/C# to render maps.  It has a Common .NET API that if you notice 
has many mapserver-isms.  All of the querying/editing is done within MDNS however.  Also, you 
should be able to download a demo if you log in.

"and the mapfile docs themselves are awfully familiar."  --Daniel Morissette

The mapfile reference page is directly copied from the mapserver site.  
I included the license at the bottom that I found on the website.
Let me know if I am missing something.

""The MapFile format used in MDNS adheres to the MapServer map file 
specification."  I didn't know that our good ol' mapfile was such a universal reference !
But, althought funny, this sentence tries to make people believe 
MapDotNet only use the mapfile format, and not mapserver itself, which 
can be considered unfaithfull if it effectively uses the mapserver 
engine behind."  --Guillaume Sueur

I wrote that.  I didn't mean to imply anything, but MDNS does use the mapFile outside of map
rendering.  However, I changed it to: 

"MapDotNet Server currently uses MapServer 5.0 to render maps, and relies on its mapFile format."

http://www.mapdotnet.com/wiki/Wiki%20Pages/MapFile%20Complete%20Reference.aspx

Scott