[Mapserver-west] php/mapserver & wms

[Nelson Guda]

Hi all,

I have a site that uses mapserver wms to generate tiles which overlay  
on top of a google map.  I would like to make the mapserver tiles  
user-customizable, so that the wms call can return a map that  
reflects a query (for example a map that shows several but not all of  
the species in the postgre database, or just records from specific  
years).  The reason I am overlaying the mapserver tiles on the google  
map is that we have too many points for the google api to plot, and  
it is much faster this way.

Can php/mapserver be used to generate custom wms such as this?  If  
so, is there a good tutorial on how to do it?

If not, does anyone have any better suggestions of how to generate  
customized wms layers from a postgre database?

many thanks,
nelson