[mapserver-users] Changing WMS Styles on the FLy

[Bill Thoen]

Hi folks,

I've got a WMS server that that's doing a great job supplying about 
40-50 layers of US national data to a project in Philadelphia, but now 
the client wants to be able to change layer styles interactively. So 
what I'd like to know is using SLD the best way to approach this? Since 
you can pass SLD info back to the server along with a GetMap request, it 
seems that SLD was designed for this job.   Or would it be easier to 
interactively modify a mapfile directly before issuing a getmap (would 
that even work?) What other ways are there to interactively change how a 
layer is styled?

I'm not very familiar with SLD yet, but it sounds like you have to set 
up a configuration file in XML, and then you pass its location to the 
system in a GetMap request. Could you also just pass serialized XML in 
the GetMap instead of a UIRL to _change_ a style? Or do you always have 
to use a configuration file? I'm still studying up on this, but I 'm 
curious whether this is the right approach to interactively change later 
styles or if I should be looking at something else altogether.

Thanks!
- Bill Thoen