[OpenLayers-Users] First-time user of OpenLayers – FORMAT of Layers

[BMcBride]

Hi Armin,

OpenLayers supports several different layer types.  Have a look at the 
http://dev.openlayers.org/releases/OpenLayers-2.9.1/doc/apidocs/files/OpenLayers-js.html
Class Documentation  under the Layer section.  Depending on the size of your
raster layers, you may be able to load them directly as an Image Layer- see 
http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/image-layer.html
http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/image-layer.html .  If they are large
images, you will probably want to cut them into tiles- see 
http://www.maptiler.org/ Map Tiler .

The same general rule applies for your vector data.  Smaller, less complex
datasets may be loaded directly as a vector layer (KML, JSON, GML, Text,
etc), while larger datasets will require some server side processing.  You
could use GeoServer to render your files as WMS overlays in OpenLayers, or
you could load the data into a spatial database (PostGIS/MySQL) and write a
PHP script to call just the bits you need to fill the map viewport.

Hope this helps to get you started...

-----
Bryan R. McBride, GISP
http://www.bryanmcbride.com bryanmcbride.com 
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