TorontoCodeSprint2009Notes
== Agenda ==
See http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Toronto_Code_Sprint_2009_Agenda#Mapserver
== Minutes, Actions, Decisions ==
=== 1. XML mapfiles ===
- A draft RFC is at http://mapserver.org/development/rfc/ms-rfc-51.html
- There are concerns about the use of the CWXML library and the benefits of a binary encoded format
- The need we are trying to address is the ability to build MapFile Editors that would be facilitated by the existence of a XML mapfile format (since the current mapfile format makes it impossible to write a forward-compatible parser)
- There are concerns about having to support another set of parsing functions. Just keeping the existing mapfile.x read/write functions in sync is already a challenge, so adding another set of reader/writer functions for XML will just make this worse.
- Conclusion: After discussion, it was decided that for the time being we should '''develop a XML schema and a XSLT to convert from XML to text mapfile'''. If the new XML format takes off then we may consider implementing support for it directly in MapServer in a future release.
=== 2. Graphical rendering ===
- Discussion of the approach of rendering plugins
- Conclusions???
=== 3. Attribute type handling (for WFS) ===
- Ticket: http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/ticket/462
- An itemObj structure has already been added to mapprimitive.h. We agree that this is the way to go, the C code should be updated to use itemObj instead of the array of itemnames, etc.
- A RFC would be required for this.
=== 4. Metadata and processing directives abuse ===
- What can we do about this?
- Conclusion: at least moving the OWS-related metadata to a separate OWS/END block (hashtable) would help.
- We'll need to maintain backwards compatibility for existing mapfiles that have their ows_* metadata in the METADATA/END block. The way it would be handled is that if a OWS/END block is present that it takes priority and all lookups happen in that hashtable only, otherwise we fallback on the metadata hashtable for all lookups.
- A RFC will be required for this.
=== 5. Mechanism to enable/hide/ignore layers in OGC Web Services ===
- See the use cases page at [wiki:HidingLayersInOGCWebServices]
- One suggestion was to use a set of OWS + SERVICE blocks in the layer definition, e.g.
LAYER
...
OWS
SERVICE
TYPE WMS
REQUESTS ALL # ALL, ONE, or specific request to accept for this layer
"key1" "value1"
"key2" "value2"
END
SERVICE
TYPE WFS
REQUESTS ...
...
END
END
END
== Breakout Sections ==
- [wiki:TorontoCodeSprint2009_Documentation Documentation]
