[Zmapserver-developers] Re: New directions for ZMapServer

[Michael S. <ms...@we...>]

Dear Sean,

thank you very much for the ZmapServer presentation, that as far as i
could see from your slides, looks really interesting and also puts the
ZmapServer Product in its appropriate position.

I have read your mail over and over again and your ideas sound very
promising. I agree with you, that in order for ZmapServer to be a
competitive player in the MapServer Interfacing League (like MapLab or
so) the OGC WMS compatibility is crucial.

I think your idea of creating a WMS class that would act like Zope DA is
great and also goes in a similar direction like the data layer object
seperate from the zmap instance that you thought of a while ago.
Implementing this to work with zmap instances would be a good step in
separating data administration, map administration and web layout tasks.

It seems to me that in your proposal you stress very much the OGC WMS
Client features (i.e. connecting to distant WMS servers, using their
data, etc.). But i think also very relevant are the features of a
ZmapServer (?) / WMS server class that has WMS serving capabilities, in
order for distant servers to include your own WMS layers and to be able
to provide cascading WMS capabilities.

To come back to the Zmap/Zsession classes. I think it important to have
a fully functional zmap interface, that is, being able to provide the
complete map instance editing capabilities over the ZMI, thus through
the web (with all the Zope security and roles management stuff these are
features that other mapping TTW interfaces or CMSs hardly can provide).
If this is achieved we would already have thorough WMS serving
capabilities. I think you are right, that the ZmapSession Object is
already at a reasonible functional level.

From this point it would be really good if we can specialize certain
features and seperate them to form individual classes with individual
functionality.

Perhaps we should think of working simultaneously in three branches
(more crosses more important at the moment in my opinion):
- zmap instances development +++
- zmapSession development    +
- WMS instance development   ++

Ok, that's my 2 ct.

Cheers, Michael

--
-----------------------------------------------------------
Michael Schulz                                in medias res
Dipl.-Geologe                              Gesellschaft für
                                Informationstechnologie mbH
                             Sautierstr. 38, 79104 Freiburg
                                     0761 55695-95 (Fax 96)
ms...@we...                             www.webgis.de