3 MapServer & SQL Server 2008 Performance Tips

Dec 122009

A current project I’ve been developing uses a combination of SQL Server 2008 and MapServer (for Windows) to Townland Signserve many WMS layers. As much as it irks developers, web users only care about two things – how nice the site looks, and how fast it is. Whether the correct information is displayed comes a poor third..

I’ve found a number of tweaks that have dramatically improved the WMS creation speed. In these examples I’m using a table in SQL Server 2008 with 50773 features (Irish Townlands if you’re asking).

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Quantum GIS and MapServer

Oct 122009

One of the main barriers I had to using MapServer as a web GIS server was that layers had to be symbolised iqgisn a text editor, using a MAPFILE. It was cumbersome to keep editing and refreshing a browser, there was no easy way to check for errors, and you have to learn the syntax and keywords.

Whilst this is ok for smaller projects where I could make these myself, larger projects require non-programmers to gather data, symbolise it, and handle the map layouts and creation.

I’ve just discovered that another of the OSGeo‘s projects, Quantum GIS (often abbreviated to QGIS) has a tool that can take a map project created and symbolised in the desktop application, and export it to a MAPFILE which can be read by MapServer. This seems to be the missing link in a complete Open Source GIS stack.

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