Archive for the ‘gdal’ tag
64-bit Mapscript for Python on Windows
Tamas Skerkes maintains a site with many different compiled versions of MapServer at http://vbkto.dyndns.org/sdk/ (the site can occasionally be overloaded or down). These are compiled daily direct from the source. It is a veritable Aladdin’s cave of treasures – especially if you are installing on a Windows Server, and even more so if you are installing for 64bit.
It gets even better though! Included in the installation are the latest SQL Server 2008 driver, 64 bit GDAL, and MapScript Python bindings. MapScript allows MapServer functions and classes to be scripted in a variety of languages.
As Python is becoming ubiquitous in the GIS world (opensource and proprietary), if you aren’t familiar with PHP then You can download the zip file and extract to a folder on your machine, in the example below I used C:\ms4w64 (old habits die hard!).
Running Python through Apache
I’m trying (and having) to start using Python more and more due to its ubiquity in the OpenSource GIS world. There are a number of add-ons and libraries for MapServer that require Python to function properly and/or quickly. It is also widely used for scripting both MapServer objects and for raster manipulation using GDAL. I initially set up Python under Apache to run the Tilecache tile server.
According to the ModPython site – “Python will run many times faster than traditional CGI and will have access to advanced features such as ability to retain database connections.”
Mod_python is an Apache module that embeds the Python interpreter within the server, and can be downloaded from their site. There are versions for both Unix and Windows, which makes it ideal for MapServer for Windows (MS4W). Ironically after saying that using Python for web applications is many times faster than CGI, the ModPython download page uses CGI..