[mapserver-users] FlatGeoBuf access (and WFS output) steps in MapServer

[Jeff McKenna]

Hi all,

I've spent some effort to document how to enable the optimized 
FlatGeobuf (FGB) format for vectors in MapServer, for both 
reading/access as well as steps to output FGB through WFS (you could 
also use these same steps for WMS GetFeatureInfo output of FGB as well): 
  https://mapserver.org/input/vector/flatgeobuf.html

The user community might be interested also in some performance testing 
that I've done with FlatGeobuf with MapServer (hardcore developers might 
question my exact methods, but for general users these results should be 
interesting).  I've added the results as a note in the Vector 
Optimization document ( https://mapserver.org/optimization/vector.html )

I used shp2img/map2img to test the map drawing speed for a few popular 
vector formats (note that these are averaged times, and are not done on 
a cold connection), with the latest MapServer 8.0-dev code on Windows 
through MS4W:

   Shapefile  0.011s
   FlatGeobuf 0.014s
   GeoPackage 0.042s
   SpatiaLite 0.045s
   PostGIS    0.053s
   GeoJSON    0.089s

The point is not to cause controversy or start analyzing my simple 
testing methods, but instead to generally show how optimized FlatGeobuf 
is for rendering (and filtering) in MapServer, and that we should all be 
considering this format for sharing vectors through our MapServer services.

Thanks,

-jeff


-- 
Jeff McKenna
GatewayGeo: Developers of MS4W, MapServer Consulting and Training
co-founder of FOSS4G
http://gatewaygeo.com/