UMN Mapserver + MS4W + MrSID = Happy Again
4 12 2006I saw on the Mapserver documentation of supported formats that MrSID and a number of other raster formats were also supported through the use of gdal as a 3rd party component. Well, I had read this to be about the same as Manifold saying that it supported MrSID through 3rd party software. Which was not very well, if at all.
You can preach to me about how uncool MrSID is until you are blue in the face, but the fact is that is the way most of our imagery data comes to us unless we want to pay more or wait for publicly available quarter quads in different formats. And these are mostly large full county mosaics, so decoding or gdal-translating them is a pretty inefficient process. So that’s what I’m stuck with unless I absolutely have to change.
On a lark, I decided to use one of the many sample Mapserver map files and edit it to point to one of the full county sid’s. Bam! Just like that, I now had a WMS image server. I was able to immediately hook it up to UDig and with a bit of experimentation, also hook it into ArcGIS Explorer. This is a ~250mb .sid file and it was being served out by my test server in the same intranet with equal or greater speed than AGX could read the file locally. UDig was even better, it actually displayed the raster faster from Mapserver’s WMS than ArcMap did reading it directly from the disk.
So, for the moment, I’m going to cool off about Manifold (I really didn’t want to have to do that data conversion right now anyway). And I’m going forward with Open Source. I’ll use Mapserver installed from the MS4W package to serve the imagery at least. The data will probably also be from Mapserver but I’ll be using SLD as the cartographic options for polygons and various fill types aren’t directly available in map files alone.
I like ka-Map or MapGuide OS as web-based clients. I’m most excited about using AGX and it’s .NET based custom tasks for a desktop based client.
My only gripe about Mapserver is that there doesn’t seem to be a good way to avoid hand coding some of the map file, unless you use MapScript. Since I installed PHP 5, MapLab doesn’t work very well, and you have to fill all that stuff by hand anyway.
If I have the time (read, not anytime soon), I’d like to make a simple multi-file select data uploader & styler that then writes the actual map file for you. And will automatically attempt to read the projection info and spatial extents of your data.
I probably won’t do much with this until the end of the week, but if I getting a working demo, I’ll defiantly post with pictures about it.
A disclaimer: I am a reasonably happy user of Manifold.
Having reviewed all three posts (this one as well as two previous), I think you are jumping the gun.
You mentioned having crashes. Did you report them to tech support? What was their response? A few years ago I had a problem which I thought was a bug in Manifold. I contacted tech support and not only did they show me the reason for the behavior that I saw (which turned out to be completely expected), but also several ways to do what I want. All within two or three days of intense email communication!
You mentioned having a problem with permissions. Sorry, that’s basic stuff that has to deal with how you configure your web server and that has been explained over and over on the forum and in the help file.
You mentioned not wanting to do the mass conversion of MrSID imagery to ECW. You are in no way forced to do that, but did you actually research how you could go about that and how much time it would cost you? Have you tried using one of the automated conversion tools (point it to a folder of MrSID files and leave it running overnight)?
I could go on and on.
Like I said, it looks like you are being a bit too fast. Which is a sad thing, since you are losing a wonderful tool which you could master and put to good use.
I want to make it clear that I don’t want to flame Manifold undeservingly. I’m really really sure that Manifold has some true strengths. They just don’t happen to be in the areas that I need to help me with the particular projects I am working on. I don’t need a lot of spatial or GIS analysis to get the job done that I want done.
All I need is a way to display and for non-GIS users to lightly interact with our repository of imagery and data that we have collected, classified, and processed to the degree we want. I am very comfortable using ArcGIS. I’ve already invested a very large amount of time and effort in that software. It is also the main GIS software that the GIS users I work with are using and going to continue to use. Unfortunately, ESRI doesn’t make software that will allow me to do this easily with software within our current price range.
So it looked like Manifold would work for this purpose. Unfortunately, it is not going to work without some significant data conversion and investment of time & energy. If I can find something that will do the job I want with a lower cost of time & effort to get working, then I’m going to go for it.
Not because I think Manifold is a failed or flawed product, but because I’m simply looking for the simplest tool to get this particular project done, with the least amount of time & energy cost for me.
As to the specifics on the permissions issue, I looked through every post on the forums related to this issue but none of the suggestions helped. The MrSID conversions I’ve done so far were overnight processes, but that is not what is the pain. It is that I have to get stuff in a different manner and format than we normally do and take the time and effort to convert it.
OK. How about augmenting the text of a blog with the words “Train Wreck” in its name with a paragraph saying that you have changed your opinion on Manifold and no longer think that Manifold IMS is an unmitigated disaster?
I have seen many professional bloggers do that so as not to mislead the people who for one reason or another will only read one blog out of the entire site. They typically place a correcting paragraph at the top of the original blog and use red color to make it stand out as a correction. (More often than not, they word the correction so that the user is tempted to read the whole story. This is a win-win, since you have both what they call responsible journalism, a little link love, and many times also a fascinating *personal* story which is what blogs are all about.)