[OpenLayers-Users] Using shp-files dynamically

[Lehtonen, Mika]

I would be glad if I could get someone's opinion on the following matter:

This is also business related, which I guess is a little unusual in this 
list. I won't be carrying on these questions, forgive me this. The 
innermost is still technical.

My client has a light WebGIS system which has been carried out with 
Openlayers, GeoServer and PostGIS as a backend. Now he would want me to 
build an extension to his system where end-users could upload their own 
shp-files into it. Just upload and start to use them, that simple. I 
guess the shps' are mainly points, and quite simple. The end-users are 
ordinary PC-users, so no complicated phases can be accepted.

We are having a huge gorge between our thoughts of how much this would 
take hours to implement. My client claims that this is a matter of 
adding a simple layer into their system and that's why it couldn't 
possibly take more than a day or two at most. And in that case, it's 
better be perfect. I said, on the other hand,  that I could build 
something in a week, that would fulfil the most of the demand, but that 
I'm not sure yet if this is something that is feasible.

So, what do you think? Any ideas what would be the best approach in 
order to carry out this?


- mika -