[mapserver-users] Re:REST and SOAP in Mapserver

[Robert Hollingsworth]

Eric,
Several years ago I did some experimental 
work with SOAP and REST inside the mapserv 
engine.  The archives may contain a few old 
messages about the details, but what I was doing 
was to consume (now defunct) ESRI ArcWeb 
Services map images as raster backdrops for 
added mapserver vector layers.  I created
 CONNECTIONTYPE ARCWEB and associated 
mapserver mapfile constructs to ArcWeb 
params.  

The communication part was fairly easy to deal with:
I refit the existing OWS cURL code to access the ESRI
server.  The construction of the SOAP xml was 
cumbersome.  The image that came back was slipped 
into the existing raster output mechanism.

When I revisited the project a year or so later, I decided
it was best to stay OUT of mapserv cgi and opt instead
for doing the work in php-mapscript, where the SOAP
processing is more advanced.

Also, as I see it, the main problem of trying to consume
SOAP and REST services in mapserver is simply that it
is difficult to anticipate what kinds of functions you are
going to be using to access the SOAP/REST server, so
there's no generic way to associate mapfile constructs to
the foreign parameters, and there's no way to make the
construction of SOAP/REST requests generic either.

If someone REALLY needed to do this within mapserv cgi,
there might be some way to have  WSDL-processing to
make things more generic, but I'd be skeptical about the
success of such a venture.

Robert H.

original message:


            
            From: "Eric Weisbender" <Weisbend at wapa.gov>
            
            	
            	
            	
        	
        	To: mapserver-users at lists.osgeo.org
 
Is it possible to consume REST and/or SOAP services 
in Mapserver somewhat like WMS and how?
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