MapServer

MapServer is a free Environnement of development making it possible to build applications Internet to space reference. It is not a SIG complet.
It can be used to carry out Web applications, but also to publish Web services in conformity with the recommendations of the Open Geospatial Consortium (WMS, WFS, WCS).

History

MapServer was developed by the university of Minnesota ( University off Minnesota ) (UMN) within the framework of the ForNet project in co-operation with NASA and the department of the natural resources of Minnesota ( Minnesota Department off Natural Resources ) (MNDNR). To date, the MapServer project is lodged by the project TerraSIP, a project sponsored by NASA, and carried out by UMN and a grouping of actors in the field of town and country planning.

Functionalities

Left cartographic advanced

Scale dependant on the representation of the objects and the execution of the application
Labelling of the objects
completely modifiable Application and use of a mechanism of " template"
Use of the police forces TrueType
Presence of additional elements to the chart: scale, legend, chart of reference
Cartography set of themes by using logical expressions or regular

Dealt with of environments and languages of development: , Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, and C#
Dealt with of many platforms: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris,…
Dealt with of many formats of data vectors or rasters

tiff /GeoTIFF, EPPL7, and well of others thanks to the library GDAL
ESRI shapfiles, PostGIS, ESRI ArcSDE, Oracle Space, MySQL and well of others thanks to the library OGR
Follows the recommendations of the Open Geospatial Consortium: WMS (client/server), not-compromise WFS (client/server), WMC, WCS, SLD (Styled To bush-hammer Descriptor), GML, S.O.S

Supports the projection charts thanks to the library PROJ4

Operation

MapServer is an achievable cgi (Common Gate Interface) which is placed in the inactive part of a Web server. When a request is sent to MapServer, it uses the information passed in the URL of the request and the file of configuration provided (MapFile) to create a card image requested. This image can be posted in a navigator. The request can also provide a legend, a bar of scale, a chart of reference and values passed like variables cgi.

It is also available in the form of API in several computer programming languages. The programmer has then access to functions allowing him amongst other things to handle the chart (zone of visualization, posted layers…), to carry out space requests, to add géoréférencés objects…

MapServer can be wide and customized with many functionalities. It can be built with many formats of writing and reading of data.

See too

mapserver

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