[mapserver-users] Re: WFS intersect request

[Marco Bagni]

Dear John,

let me take your request as the occasion to share a thought with this
community.

You are experiencing my same problem and your last deduction is correct:
BBOX works, for the rest the mismatch between the available documentation
and the real implementation of the spatial filters (if really implemented!
at this point doubting is legitimate) makes impossible for a normal human
being to sort out how to make the Intersect or other filters work.

What is missing is the proper syntax on how to describe the feature
boundaries that you want to use to perform the spatial filter.

I have seen examples where your "SHAPE" was replaced by "Polygon" but also
for that statement was not clear how to say what projection (EPSG) use.

Fortunately the given (working) example for the BBOX filter that you can
find in the documentation is complete (covers also the declaration of the
EPSG directive) and works.

You and I (and many more users with the same problem) are facing the
"other side" of the Open Source. Who writes the code and releases it for
public domain, sometimes arranges things in such a way that, elegantly,
the users are "suggested" to turn to his commercial consultancy services
in order to have the information that makes the whole thing work; he has
to put some bread on his table too!

But almost all of the problems that we are facing in this specific area
depend mostly on us, since I find difficult to think that in so many years
nobody has tried to apply a Spatial filter different from BBOX.

Most probably these guys used this very list to ask the support from other
users but when it came the time to "return" something to the user's
community (for instance the simple howto recipe that solved their
problem), then all the animosity and kindness shown up in the request
message, disappeared and the found solution remained in their code without
being shared with the rest of us.

Let's start to SHARE. Be generous and the community shall become a real
living thing made of requests and also of solutions (real solution, well
written and comprehensible to everybody).

Many parts of Mapserver features are well supported by this community and
the knowledge is already generously shared. This peculiar area (SLD and
WFS filtering) is not but the solution is within our realm, just share it.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Marco


On Thu, June 16, 2011 4:24 am, John Callahan wrote:
> This WFS GetFeature request did work if I replaced <ogc:Intersects> with
> the
> <ogc:BBOX> spatial filter.
>
> - John
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 12:47 PM, John Callahan
> <john.callahan at udel.edu>wrote:
>
>> Thanks. Yes, my server does support Intersect filter, according to the
>> WFS GetCaps file. I'm using the latest MS4W install with MS 6.
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, June 9, 2011, Alexandre Dub