[Mapserver-west] Greetings Western MapServer Users!

[Ken Lord]

Hi Tyler ... and Mapsperver-west list,

A little background on me: I've been into mapserver for a couple years
now, starting with developing an application for a railway for my BCIT
practicum, thanks to Joost Van Ulden who introduced MapServer to me
and the geomatics guys at BGC Engineering.

Im afraid the flash based mapserver app that we showed off at the
Geotec event isn't public but anyone who cares to stop in and see us
at our vancouver office is
welcome to see the site.

BGC Engineering Inc
500-1045 Howe Street
Vancouver BC

Our flash based interface is being used to access an online
geotechnical database on the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline in the NWT. 
Mapserver is the backend, with a combination of shapefiles, PostGIS,
rasters and WMS datasets ... even a MapInfo table hiding in there
somewhere.  Many of the datasets tie into a non spatial database to be
used in associated flash tools such as borehole sections and climate
data that are charted on the fly, as well as mouseover popup controls
that are associated with points on the map.

Lately we've been migrating more to PostGIS to allow us to create
better tools for the engineers to search and interact with the data.

We do have a few mapserver websites that use non-flash interfaces, but
unfortuneately those aren't public either.

We use MapServer in its CGI flavour, and have yet to encounter
anything that would require us to go to php.  A little JavaScript,
ASP, and URL encoding here and there can work wonders with some pretty
simple code (I'm no hard core programmer!).  This is probably where I
can be of the most help to the list.

In my past life, I was an exploration geologist, searching for gold in
BC and the Yukon.  Outside my day job at BGC I've made a mapserver
site for an exploration company that I used to work on site for. It
uses Mapserver 4.4.1 and the new windows version of PostGIS running on
my home computer.

http:\\24.87.220.99\ms\iwafs.html   ... Dont hit it all at once, my
hamsters are tired!

I'd like to see the site used for Investor education, but it hasn't
been promoted very much yet. The site has been used by exploration
geologists to plan work programs, it holds hundreds of drill holes
that can be queried for assay tables and section figures, 10,500 soil
samples that can be symbolized by your choice assay of any of 32
different elements ... using one map layer, about 100 layers that also
include underground mine workings, quartz veins, 25cm orthophotos,
geophysics etc. About 3-4GB of data so far.

One of my favourite layers on the map shows BC Minfile and Assessment
Report locations - these are reports on mineral occurances in BC
dataing back to the 1870's, and work companies have done on their
mineral claims over the the last ~50 years.  Querying a point takes
you directly the government website where you can view a summary and
download a PDF of the report.

If my website seems to be down, I'm probably playing World of
Warcraft, try back later!

And a big thanks again to Tyler for the list, and for the help he's
given me in getting WMS map layers working on our applications.

One last thing ... Our geomatics department intends to start up a
Vancouver Open Source GIS software Users Group.  We have not put
anything at all in motion yet, but if there is interest out there we
might just get things rolling.

Cheers,
Ken Lord
BGC Engineering Inc
500-1045 Howe Street
Vancouver BC


On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 23:04:45 -0800, Tyler Mitchell
<tylermitchell at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Ken, do you have any apps online?  The one I saw at Geotec (from Jerry?) was
> pretty snazzy and wondered if it was publically accessible.
> 
> Tyler
> 
> On March 14, 2005 01:29 pm, Ken Lord wrote:
> > Hello everyone,
> >
> > Greetings from Vancouver BC, Here's to a great new mapserver list,
> >
> > Let all your maps generate, your mapfiles be clean, and may all your
> > WMS sources always be online!
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Ken Lord
> > _______________________________________________
> > Mapserver-west mailing list
> > Mapserver-west at lists.maptools.org
> > http://lists.maptools.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-west
>