[ms4w-users] gdal_step_by_step

[Jeff McKenna]

Comments inline:

Buchholz, Robert wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> i face problems concerning the gdal (catalog for rasterdata). I need a step by step tutorial to be able to use the gdal options answering additionally following questions:
> 1. how to find out if .tif is supported with gdal?
> ->C:\>gdalinfo --formats" at the commandline do not work!

You need to set your path first by executing the following at the 
commandline:

   C:/ms4w/setenv.bat

Then execute gdalinfo to see what raster formats you can use.

> ->C:\>mapserv -v  states: ...INPUT=OGR INPUT=GDAL INPUT=SHAPEFILE

Once you execute setenv.bat you can execute mapserv -v from anywhere.

By the way that mapserv output states that you can use GDAL for your 
raster data access.  That means that you can now follow the 
MapServer-Raster howto to add and/or process your data 
(http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/howto/raster_data)

> 2. I have 8GB of spatially referenced rasterdata on other drive than C:/ and can not copy them to C:/ms4w/elsewhere. Can I nevertheless use gdal?

Yes.  You would just modify your mapfile's SHAPEPATH parameter 
accordingly.  Also, once you have executed setenv.bat you can process 
your data with the GDAL utilities on that drive as well.

> 3. Is there a GUI for gdal?

The GDAL utilities are available through the commandline only.

> 4. Does gdal only work on commandline? (I am absolute beginner)

Hopefully I addressed this above: gdal is ready to work through 
mapserver in ms4w.  If you want to use the gdal utilities 
(http://www.gdal.org/gdal_utilities.html) to pre-process your data you 
must use the commandline (after setting setenv.bat)

> 5. any .exe to doubleclick?

The gdal utilities physically live in /ms4w/tools/gdal-ogr/, but make 
sure to execute setenv.bat first and you can run them from any location.

> 6. set any path? where and how?
> 

yes: run /ms4w/setenv.bat first.

Basically give the mapserver-raster howto a good read.


-- 
Jeff McKenna
DM Solutions Group Inc.
http://www.dmsolutions.ca