[Chameleon] Does chameleon have a WMS CLIENT?

[Paul Spencer]

Roland,

Chameleon is written in PHP.  It uses a variety of PHP extensions, one 
of which is PHP/MapScript.  PHP/MapScript is a scripting extension of 
mapserver that exposes the mapserver API to PHP.

There is only one software installation to maintain.  There is only one 
server for Chameleon.

Chameleon manages all data on the server using a MAP file.  The MAP file 
can refer to a variety of data sources including local data in a large 
variety of formats (like shapefile, MITAB, SDE, Oracle, PostGIS  etc and 
many raster formats) and to remote data using OGC protocols such as WMS, 
WFS or WCS (I don't know what the status of WCS client is though). 
MapServer provides the client access to the remote data.

MapServer can also act as an OGC server for WMS, WFS and WCS but that is 
not required for Chameleon.

The advantage to using Chameleon is that you can integrate many 
different data sources into a single application.  A JavaScript client 
may be more efficient for just WMS (assuming all WMSs that you want to 
access are available in the same SRS).  Chameleon, by using 
PHP/MapScript, allows you many more possibilities at the (possible) 
sacrifice of performance.  By using PHP/MapScript, it is possible to 
combine data from WMS servers that don't support a mutual SRS because 
MapServer can request it in a known SRS and then reproject it locally 
(at a loss of image quality ... but it works)

Also, using PHP/MapScript for many of the core geographic functions 
reduces the size of javascript code needed to interact with the application.

Cheers,

Paul

Roland G. wrote:
> Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
> 
>> You can use the webserver from which you serve your client anyway ....
>>
> 
> You mean, you could use the same computer where your webserver is 
> running to install your Chameleon server? This won't change the fact 
> that the Chameleon server is still a distinct server(program) which has 
> to be separately installed and maintained.
> 
> Roland
> _______________________________________________
> Chameleon mailing list
> Chameleon at lists.maptools.org
> http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/chameleon
> 

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|Paul Spencer                           pspencer at dmsolutions.ca   |
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|Applications & Software Development                              |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                 http://www.dmsolutions.ca/|
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