Starting with TIGER Line Data and MapServer

[Monali Lodha]

Hi,

We are working on displaying the TIGER Data using MapServer.
This is our first time with MapServer, and we would appreciate your
help in the following areas:
1. We could run the Itasca Demo Application. However, we could not
integrate our shapefiles with the sample Mapfile. We have read the
Mapfile documentation at the MapServer site. Any pointers on creating
Mapfile?

2. We have chosen a single state for our initial demo. However, the
number of shapefiles is almost 300. How should we incorporate all
these in the Mapfile?


Any suggestions are welcome.
Thanks.

Monali
Monali
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[Stephen Woodbridge]

Monali Lodha wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We are working on displaying the TIGER Data using MapServer.
> This is our first time with MapServer, and we would appreciate your
> help in the following areas:
> 1. We could run the Itasca Demo Application. However, we could not
> integrate our shapefiles with the sample Mapfile. We have read the
> Mapfile documentation at the MapServer site. Any pointers on creating
> Mapfile?

IIRC, Itasca Demo data is in some State Plain projection and Tiger
Shapefiles are in geographic (unprojected) state.

> 2. We have chosen a single state for our initial demo. However, the
> number of shapefiles is almost 300. How should we incorporate all
> these in the Mapfile?

Look at using TILEINDEX

http://mapserver.org/optimization/index.html#optimization

> Any suggestions are welcome.
> Thanks.
>
> Monali
> Monali
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> mapserver-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-users

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[Dan Little]

A few questions for you.

Regarding #1
Were all of your shapes in the same projection as the Itasca demo? If not, their coordinates may have been far outside of the extents of the map.

Regarding #2
Do you have 300 shapefiles, meaning you have 300 layers you wish to display?  If so, you might want to take a look at an alternate solution than the Itasca demo.  For example (toots own horn) GeoMOOSE is designed to allow multiple mapfiles to be used within a single application.   It makes the management of the large number of layers much more palatable.  We also have a number of users that are at the same level of layer management as you are and could give more suggestions on how to best manage that data for use in a Web GIS.


----- Original Message ----

> From: Monali Lodha <[hidden email]>
> To: [hidden email]
> Sent: Tue, November 3, 2009 8:14:38 AM
> Subject: [mapserver-users] Starting with TIGER Line Data and MapServer
>
> Hi,
>
> We are working on displaying the TIGER Data using MapServer.
> This is our first time with MapServer, and we would appreciate your
> help in the following areas:
> 1. We could run the Itasca Demo Application. However, we could not
> integrate our shapefiles with the sample Mapfile. We have read the
> Mapfile documentation at the MapServer site. Any pointers on creating
> Mapfile?
>
> 2. We have chosen a single state for our initial demo. However, the
> number of shapefiles is almost 300. How should we incorporate all
> these in the Mapfile?
>
>
> Any suggestions are welcome.
> Thanks.
>
> Monali
> Monali
> _______________________________________________
> mapserver-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-users

     
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[Monali Lodha]

Thanks Stephen and Dan!

@Stephen
The recent Tiger Shapefiles come with .prj files and do have a
projection. Could there be a different issue then?

@Dan
> Regarding #1
> Were all of your shapes in the same projection as the Itasca demo? If not, their coordinates may have been far outside of the extents of the map.
Yes, we used the data for Itasca County.

> Regarding #2
> Do you have 300 shapefiles, meaning you have 300 layers you wish to display?  If so, you might want to take a look at an alternate solution than the Itasca demo.  For example (toots own horn) GeoMOOSE is designed to allow multiple mapfiles to be used within a single application.   It makes the management of the large number of layers much more palatable.  We also have a number of users that are at the same level of layer management as you are and could give more suggestions on how to best manage that data for use in a Web GIS.

No. We have a few (10-15) layers. However, the shapefiles
corresponding to each layer are different for every county. I shall
also forward my query in the GeoMoose mailing list. Thanks!
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[Fawcett, David]

Is the projection of the TIGER files and the output projection of the Itasca Demo the same?  I am guessing that Itasca uses UTM Zone 15N (EPSG 26915) and that the TIGER data might be in a geographic spatial reference system (EPSG 3624?).  

If this is the case, you will need to define the input projection for your TIGER layers and make sure that you have an output projection set at the MAP level.  In other words, even if all of the data sets have specified projections, you will need to tell MapServer what the input projections for each layer are if you need MapServer to utilize layers with different spatial reference systems.

David.

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Monali Lodha
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 9:45 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [mapserver-users] Starting with TIGER Line Data and MapServer

Thanks Stephen and Dan!

@Stephen
The recent Tiger Shapefiles come with .prj files and do have a
projection. Could there be a different issue then?

@Dan
> Regarding #1
> Were all of your shapes in the same projection as the Itasca demo? If not, their coordinates may have been far outside of the extents of the map.
Yes, we used the data for Itasca County.

> Regarding #2
> Do you have 300 shapefiles, meaning you have 300 layers you wish to display?  If so, you might want to take a look at an alternate solution than the Itasca demo.  For example (toots own horn) GeoMOOSE is designed to allow multiple mapfiles to be used within a single application.   It makes the management of the large number of layers much more palatable.  We also have a number of users that are at the same level of layer management as you are and could give more suggestions on how to best manage that data for use in a Web GIS.

No. We have a few (10-15) layers. However, the shapefiles
corresponding to each layer are different for every county. I shall
also forward my query in the GeoMoose mailing list. Thanks!
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[hidden email]
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[Monali Lodha]

Thanks David. I made the corresponding change.

Could anyone point us to a sample mapfile generated for Tiger data?


On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Fawcett, David
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Is the projection of the TIGER files and the output projection of the Itasca Demo the same?  I am guessing that Itasca uses UTM Zone 15N (EPSG 26915) and that the TIGER data might be in a geographic spatial reference system (EPSG 3624?).
>
> If this is the case, you will need to define the input projection for your TIGER layers and make sure that you have an output projection set at the MAP level.  In other words, even if all of the data sets have specified projections, you will need to tell MapServer what the input projections for each layer are if you need MapServer to utilize layers with different spatial reference systems.
>
> David.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Monali Lodha
> Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 9:45 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: [mapserver-users] Starting with TIGER Line Data and MapServer
>
> Thanks Stephen and Dan!
>
> @Stephen
> The recent Tiger Shapefiles come with .prj files and do have a
> projection. Could there be a different issue then?
>
> @Dan
>> Regarding #1
>> Were all of your shapes in the same projection as the Itasca demo? If not, their coordinates may have been far outside of the extents of the map.
> Yes, we used the data for Itasca County.
>
>> Regarding #2
>> Do you have 300 shapefiles, meaning you have 300 layers you wish to display?  If so, you might want to take a look at an alternate solution than the Itasca demo.  For example (toots own horn) GeoMOOSE is designed to allow multiple mapfiles to be used within a single application.   It makes the management of the large number of layers much more palatable.  We also have a number of users that are at the same level of layer management as you are and could give more suggestions on how to best manage that data for use in a Web GIS.
>
> No. We have a few (10-15) layers. However, the shapefiles
> corresponding to each layer are different for every county. I shall
> also forward my query in the GeoMoose mailing list. Thanks!
> _______________________________________________
> mapserver-users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapserver-users
>

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[Stephen Woodbridge]

Monali Lodha wrote:
> Thanks Stephen and Dan!
>
> @Stephen
> The recent Tiger Shapefiles come with .prj files and do have a
> projection. Could there be a different issue then?

Mapserver does NOT look at the *.prj file. You have to do that yourself
and set the PROJECTION ... END blocks appropriately in mapserver.

> @Dan
>> Regarding #1
>> Were all of your shapes in the same projection as the Itasca demo? If not, their coordinates may have been far outside of the extents of the map.
> Yes, we used the data for Itasca County.

SO you need to set the PROJECTION block in the MAP section AND each
LAYER needs to have a PROJECTION block. The one in the MAP section
defines the output projection to use and the ones in the LAYER define
what the source data's projection is (these can be determinged from the
*.prj file).

>> Regarding #2
>> Do you have 300 shapefiles, meaning you have 300 layers you wish to display?  If so, you might want to take a look at an alternate solution than the Itasca demo.  For example (toots own horn) GeoMOOSE is designed to allow multiple mapfiles to be used within a single application.   It makes the management of the large number of layers much more palatable.  We also have a number of users that are at the same level of layer management as you are and could give more suggestions on how to best manage that data for use in a Web GIS.
>
> No. We have a few (10-15) layers. However, the shapefiles
> corresponding to each layer are different for every county. I shall
> also forward my query in the GeoMoose mailing list. Thanks!

Typically all county files for a given layer have identical structure in
TIGER so you can group them together using a TILEINDEX in the mapfile.

-Steve
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