[mapserver-users] Displaying Huge Data on Mapserver

[Frank Warmerdam]

Rishikant Lal wrote:
> Dear Friends,
> I need some help. I have a Point Feature Layer that I want to display on 
> Map Server. The layer has Nearly Ten Million Point Features.

Rishikant,

This is not a terribly large database though it is certainly large enough
that care must be taken in how it is accessed.

> What kind of Data Base should I use?
> Will Post GIS support this kind of Data?
> What are the steps I should use to speed up the Map Display Process?

You should be able to achieve good performance with tile indexed shapefiles
with indexes on the individual shapefiles and the tileindex.  Some
experimentation might be required to find an optimal breakdown.  You could
*try* it in one big shapefile with a spatial index but I have some doubts
about whether this would give ideal performance.

This dataset could also be well handled in PostGIS with a spatial index
on the geometry column of course.

A lot depends on what you want to do with this dataset of course.  I'm assuming
you want to render maps of very local regions with only a few thousands of
points.  Rendering points as symbols or labels can be expensive so we wary
of trying to render too many on a map.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
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