Creating Maps for MapServer
What is MapServer? Here is the description from OSGeo:
MapServer is an open source development environment for building spatially-enabled web mapping applications and services. It is fast, flexible, reliable and can be integratated into just about any GIS environment. Originally developed at the University of Minnesota, MapServer is now maintained by developers around the world.
MapServer runs on all major operating systems and will work with almost any web server. MapServer features MapScript, a powerful scripting environment that supports many popular languages including PHP, Python, Perl, C# and Java. Using MapScript makes it fast and easy to build complex geospatial web applications.
MapServer is supported by a vibrant user community so help is just an email away. Because MapServer is open source you get the source code so it is possible to extend the software to exactly meet your needs.
Although MapServer excels at serving images to the web, including OGC standards WMS/WFS/WCS, creating the map configuration files is not-trivial, at least for a production level output. MapFiles (.map extension) are the basic configuration files for MapServer. They are simply text files that contain: pointers to data files/databases, symbology, scale dependency, database joins, references to templates, WMS service properties, and many other admin and conf parameters.
The following lists some of the tools, docs, websites, and other resources to facilitate creating MapFiles. If you have other thoughts or recommend a product I missed, feel free to comment.
Tools and Utilities to Create MapFiles
- ArcMap MXD to ArcIMS AXL & MapServer converter export utility
- MapStorer
- Quantum GIS has a MapServer Export Tool
- AMein! and AVein!
