[mapserver-users] Any thoughts on combining 3 regional maps into one?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Hi all,

I have 3 regional mapfiles for US, Canada and Mexico and I want to 
create a single North America map. Since the data comes from separate 
vendors and they refresh on different cycles, I'm trying to figure out 
the best way to structure this in a mapfile. I also need to maintain 
each region as a separate mapfile. (I'm ignoring issues like data 
alignment over borders.)

The reginal mapfile data is structure like:

.../us/data/<shapefiles>
.../us/us.map
.../mx/data/<shapefiles>
.../mx/mx.map
.../ca/data/<shapefiles>
.../ca/ca.map

The shapepath for each mapfile is set to the local data directory. What 
I would like to avoid is having to change all the paths in the mapfiles 
to accomodate a change like:

.../na/us/data/
.../na/mx/data/
.../na/ca/data/
.../na/na.map

It would be cool if I can change the shapepath in the middle of the 
mapfile so layers beyond the change would use the new shapepath, but I 
suspect that will not work.

So it looks like my options are:

1. rewrite all the mapfile data pathes as I combine them into one new 
mapfile and maintain two copies, regional and na versions.

2. maybe create a new mapfile that loads each of the regions as a WMS 
client and overlays the adjacent regions. This will get served via 
mapcache so that might add some options for tile assembly.

3. other ideas????

Thanks,
   -Steve