[mapserver-users] creating views/queries on the fly

[Jan Hartmann]

Hi Puneet,

Would a scripting language, like Pl/Pgsql, be something to tackle your 
problem? It lets you build dynamic commands: 
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/interactive/plpgsql-statements.html#PLPGSQL-STATEMENTS-EXECUTING-DYN. 


I have also used PHP to build dynamic SQL queries, but I don't know if 
you can use that in your environment. I access those PHP-scripts in QGis 
by writing out the mapping results as WMS services 
(http://mapserver.org/ogc/mapscript.html).

You could also try Pl/Python from  within Postgresql 
(http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/interactive/plpython.html)l. I've 
never used it, but it's syntactically certainly more flexible than 
Pl/Pgsql. Or even Pl/Perl, if your inclinations lie in that direction :-)

Jan

On 07/06/10 06:39, P Kishor wrote:
> This started of as a QGIS question, but I am finding it impossible to
> register for the QGIS forums, so I am asking on the MapServer list, as
> this is going to evolve into a MapServer question as well.
>
> I want to query a PostGIS db with arbitrary queries -- views that join
> spatial and non-spatial tables. However, the permutations of these
> queries are too many to predefine them as views. As far as I can tell,
> QGIS does not allow me to create views/queries on the fly. It can only
> connect to an already defined view, which I can then further filter,
> but it can't actually let me create a view.
>
> So, what is the best way to go about doing this with MapServer? Oh,
> and if someone could kindly shed light on QGIS's capabilities in this
> regard, well, that would be gravy.
>
> Many thanks,
>
>