[maplab-users] help the newbie!!!

[Christopher R. Thorne]

Hello Again,

I will try to answer your question, but in the future (for your benefit) 
please submit all maplab related question to the mailing list. 
(maplab-users@lists.maptools.org) You will have a great chance of 
getting the answer you are looking for.

If I understand you correctly you wish to display your TIGER data on the 
web. The fundamental technology that does this is MapServer. How 
MapServer is able to display your data is through a map file *.map. A 
mapfile is more like a configuration file of how you wish to display and 
access your data.

MapLab is a tool that allows you to edit and create these mapfiles 
(*.map). Although MapLab utilizes MapServer through php_mapscript.dll it 
does not necessarily allow you to create web mapping applications. You 
asked the question how would you edit maplab to display your data. 
Although in MapLab you can preview mapfiles. Editing MapLab to create 
your application is not the best way to go.

To create your own web mapping application, your best bet would be to 
use Chameleon technology. Chameleon can be found on maptools.org same 
place were you found maplab. Chameleon helps you to utilizes MapServer 
again, but gives you the power to create simple custom web mapping 
applications.

To put this all together, you can use the mapfile you created in MapLab 
and connect the mapfile to the HTML web mapping application template you 
created using chameleon widget tags. Once you have created the mapfile 
(.map) and your HTML chameleon application template, you would then feed 
these two piece back to Chameleon and then chameleon will then 
parse/translate the both the html template and mapfile, to display the 
map within the html template.

This is the general process for creating a web mapping application. But 
before you do any of this you will have to figure out how you wish to 
best structure and optimize your  mapping data for web mapping display 
purposes. Optimization of your data is a very important part in making 
your web application querying data efficiently. Optimization of data CAN 
include, creating a tile index, quad tree indexing of single shape 
files, removal of unnecessary columns in tables, if you plan to have a 
large range of zoom levels within your application you might consider 
generalization of line or polygon features for when zoomed out on large 
areas. 

You currently are using TIGER files. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do 
not believe TIGER files can be directly read by MapServer. In the past 
what I have done is translate the TIGER data to ESRI Shapefiles (*.shp). 
I found that there more open source mapserver friendly data optimization 
tools.  eg. shp2tile.exe (bracks up large files), tile4ms.exe (creates a 
polygon shape file tileindex), shptree.exe (creates a quad tree file for 
your shape file *.qix).

The open source tool, OGR, may help you in translating your TIGER data 
for MapServer. I know very little about OGR. People on the mailing lists 
will probably know more about this and point you in the right direction.

That is it I think ;)

Chris


Dharani Babu wrote:

> Mr.Chris
>   Thanks a lot for that reply . I found the codes etc . As a newbie I 
> have been able to draw Maps from the Lon /Lat values from TIGER files 
> ( Rt1 files ). So I have projected them using VC++ . But my project 
> has to deal with rendering of maps in wep pages . So it seems various 
> county record files have to be read and rendered as maps as map lab 
> does . So could u pls tell me where exactly I can customize the map 
> lab source code to project our own data ? In what ways ? and where to 
> start it as a new one to this stuff . pls reply
> with regards
> dharani
>
>
>> From: "Christopher R. Thorne" <cthorne@dmsolutions.ca>
>> Reply-To: cthorne@dmsolutions.ca
>> To: Dharani Babu <dharanibabus@hotmail.com>
>> CC: maplab-users@lists.maptools.org
>> Subject: Re: [maplab-users] help the newbie!!!
>> Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 08:37:31 -0500
>>
>>
>> Hello Dharani,
>>
>> You can find MapLab on www.maptools.org. This is the main webpage 
>> where DM Solutions publishes its open source technology as well as 
>> other materials.
>> http://www.maptools.org/maplab/index.phtml
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>> Dharani Babu wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all
>>> I am dharani from india . I am into developing a new web enabled GIS 
>>> software . But I am anewbie to GIS . I have sofar been able to draw 
>>> some lines from RT1 file TIGER . But I am not able to look into the 
>>> Map lab source code . I dounloaded the MAp server and found that its 
>>> a collection of excutables . We have Map Lab ( Map Edit etc ) 
>>> already running but I want to know where can I find the source code 
>>> of Map lab . Please advise me
>>> with regards
>>> dharani
>>>
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>>
>>
>> -- 
>> ---------------------
>> Christopher R. Thorne
>> GIS Product Specialist,
>> DM Solutions Group Inc.
>>
>> http://www.dmsolutions.ca
>> email: thorne@dmsolutions.ca
>> Phone: (613) 565-5056 ext.22
>> Fax :  (613) 565-0925
>>
>>
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>
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-- 
---------------------
Christopher R. Thorne
GIS Product Specialist,
DM Solutions Group Inc.

http://www.dmsolutions.ca
email: thorne@dmsolutions.ca
Phone: (613) 565-5056 ext.22
Fax :  (613) 565-0925