[OpenLayers-Users] Suggestion for hosting platform?

[Andrew Hughes]

If you are looking to serve dynamic maps/data then you're probably going to
look at geoserver's or mapserver's non-cached services (WMS, WFS... but not
WMS-C or TMS). Dynamic data sources are extremely slow when compared to
static cached services (WMS-C or TMS)(unless of course your dataset is
small). If performance is what you are after, try and use a *cache as much
as possible*...

My first rant would be to consider what data is dynamic and what is not. As
soon as you work out what is not dynamic... look to caching (WMS-C in
Geoserver or TMS in tilecache). I don't believe one will out perform the
other... it's really just disk I/O, caches are fast! I've always used
tilecache with geoserver wms rendering the maps. TileCache has some oooober
tweakable configuration and you have the ability to (intelligently) manage
your cache with very little effort.

Dynamic data performance relies heavily on the performance of the
datasource. PostGIS is in my experience a brilliant spatial database. If the
database is slow sometimes you might need to change the transaction config
and fine tune it. But that's life :)

MapServer vs Geoserver. It depends... both are good. Geoserver is quick and
easy to setup, better standards compliance, but styling your maps (with
SLD's) takes a while. MapServer is probably a touch faster rendering, offers
some nice anti-aliasing and styling of maps, but has less interoperability.
To be honest, plan on using them both - but use a common service
specification that they both offer (like WMS or WFS). That way you could
switch the backend without disrupting clients.

These would be my recipes:

OpenLayers ----> TileCache TMS (on Apache+Python) -----wms----> Geoserver
(on Tomcat or other) --------> PostGIS (or readonly ShapeFile).
or
OpenLayers ----> TileCache TMS (on Apache+Python) -----wms----> Mapserver
(on Apache) --------> PostGIS (or readonly ShapeFile).
or
OpenLayers ---->  -----wmsc----> Geoserver (on Tomcat or other) -------->
PostGIS (or readonly ShapeFile).


Hope this helped.

--AH :)

On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 12:55 AM, David Fawcett <david.fawcett at gmail.com>wrote:

> WMS-C or TMS
>
> Thanks,
>
> David.
>
> On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Eric Lemoine
> <eric.lemoine at camptocamp.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 3:54 PM, David Fawcett <david.fawcett at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> Jeff,
> >>
> >> I sounds like OpenLayers with a WMS or TileCache or tiled WMS layer
> >> would work for you.  Even if you used a pre-rendered tile backend, I
> >> believe that you could still send WMS getFeatureInfo requests to a WMS
> >> server (you would need to keep the data in sync though).
> >>
> >> If KaMap wasn't performing well for you, I don't think that just
> >> because KaMap was built on phpMapScript, you should assume that you
> >> will get the same performance from MapServer.
> >>
> >> MapServer can serve up WMS pretty well.  You can look at a comparison
> >> of MapServer and GeoServer in the FOSS4G WMS shootout.
> >> http://www.slideshare.net/gatewaygeomatics.com/wms-performance-shootout
> >>
> >> The trick to serving any of this data quickly is making sure that you
> >> have pre-processed and optimized/indexed your data as much as possible
> >> to reduce the amount of processing that has to happen at the time of a
> >> request.  As for MapServer vector data sources, I believe that the
> >> common thought is that shapefiles are still faster, but PostGIS
> >> performance has been significantly improved in the past few years.  In
> >> cases where your data is more complex, you have more complicated
> >> filtering needs, or your data changes frequently, the flexibility of
> >> PostGIS is worth the small performance hit.  MapServer also has
> >> support for SQL Server.
> >>
> >> David.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> If you are familiar with MapServer, you can use it to pre-render the
> >> tiles for your TileCache or WMS-T.
> >
> > David, I guess you meant WMS-C, no?
> >
> >
> > --
> > Eric Lemoine
> >
> > Camptocamp France SAS
> > Savoie Technolac, BP 352
> > 73377 Le Bourget du Lac, Cedex
> >
> > Tel : 00 33 4 79 44 44 96
> > Mail : eric.lemoine at camptocamp.com
> > http://www.camptocamp.com
> >
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