Mapserv is planned to be a spatial query service. Clients send abstract query trees encoded as Thrift messages to a server. The server performs the query, and then sends the results back to the client.
In principle, the client and server can be implemented however they want. The current implementation (see "What's Done" notes below) consists of the following parts:
- A Python server which uses a SQLite backend (with the R*Tree extension)
- A Python query DSL, which makes it simple to generate complex abstract query messages
The Python/SQLite server is just an experiment to get the service up and running. This combination was chosen as it was the simplest server to get up and running. Other possible backends could use the language of your choice (ideally C++, Java, C#, or something else with good thread support), and any of the following storage backends:
- SQLite/R*Tree
- MySQL/MyISAM
- PostgreSQL/PostGIS
- A custom spatial index implementation (there are many floating around on the net, if you need some inspiration)
This project is in a pre-alpha phase. Here's what's currently implemented:
- A prototype of the thrift query spec (see
query.thrift). This is still actively being modified. Note: Some SQLite-isms may have bled through into the query spec. - The Python query DSL is usable (however,
UPDATEstatements have not yet been implemented). - There is no server implementation yet.
If you want to hack on this project, it lives on GitHub at http://github.com/eklitzke/mapserv.
There are some tests in the aptly named tests directory. You can run all of
the tests by running make tests (although they're run in a sort of strange
way, since each test file is run separately).