RFCs

A MapServer RFC describes a major change in the technological underpinnings of MapServer, major additions to functionality, or changes in the direction of the project.

MS RFC 1: Technical Steering Committee Guidelines by Frank Warmerdam — last modified 2007-09-13 09:59

This document describes how the MapServer Technical Steering Committee determines membership, and makes decisions on MapServer technical issues.

MS RFC 2: Creating line features and/or shapes using WKT by Stephen Lime — last modified 2006-01-05 16:17

Developing inline features or shapes within MapScript can be a bit cumbersome. One alternative would be to allow users to define feature using the Well-Known Text format. The proposed solution would allow users to use this format:

MS RFC 3: Layer Plug-in Architecture by Jani Averbach — last modified 2005-12-14 16:33

Change current layer infrastructure from switch based static solution to the virtual table based dynamic solution. The main objectives for this proposal are cleaning and simplifying code and provide a robust architecture to implement dynamic plug-in API for external layer providers.

MS RFC 4: MapServer Raster Resampling by Frank Warmerdam — last modified 2005-12-17 11:06

Additional resampling kernels will be implemented in the MapServer GDAL raster resampler code including "averaging", "bilinear" and "cubic".

MS RFC 5: MapServer Horizon Reprojection Improvements by Frank Warmerdam — last modified 2006-11-30 08:41

To provide a practical solution to MapServer Bug 411 - Clipping Issue with Ortho Projection:

MS RFC 6: Color Range Mapping of Continuous Feature Values by Bill Binko — last modified 2005-12-14 13:36

This proposal addresses the need to be able to easily map continuous feature values to a continuous range of colors.

MS RFC 7: MapServer CVS Commit Management by Frank Warmerdam — last modified 2006-10-25 21:30

Procedures for selecting CVS committers, and rules for committers.

MS RFC 8: Pluggable External Feature Layer Providers by Jani Averbach — last modified 2005-12-14 16:33

Provide a way to user actually plug-in external third party feature layer providers to the mapserver at run time.

MS RFC 9: Item tag for query templates by Stephen Lime — last modified 2007-03-13 12:28

A the moment processing of attributes exposed via query templates is limited to a couple forms of escaping. This RFC describes a simple scheme to allow for extended processing of attributes before sending to the a users.

MS RFC 10: Joining the Open Source Geospatial Foundation by Howard Butler — last modified 2006-02-21 10:04

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) presents a unique opportunity for MapServer in that it can provide an umbrella organization that can provide benefits and possibilities that a project by itself simply cannot provide. This RFC will outline what those benefits can be to the project, define MapServer's role in participating, and describe the unique process of how we propose to decide to join.

MS RFC 12: C code Unit tests by Umberto Nicoletti — last modified 2006-03-03 04:55

Implement unit testing for the c portion of mapserver code.

MS RFC 11: Support for Curved Labels by Stephen Lime — last modified 2006-02-21 10:54

This RFC addresses one of the most frequently requested features for MapServer- labels that follow curved linear features.

MS RFC 13: SOS support by Yewondwossen Assefa — last modified 2006-06-04 11:39

Support of Sensor Observation Service in Mapserver.

MS RFC 14: Relative Coordinates for INLINE features by Stephen Lime — last modified 2006-05-18 15:44

Current it is possible to have features with pixel coordinates and to draw them by setting TRANSFORM FALSE in a layer definition. However the coordinates are relative to the upper lefthand corner of the image (0,0) which makes it impossible to anchor things like copyright statements to the other corners of the images if the image size can change (e.g. via WMS).

MS RFC 15: Support for thread neutral operation of mapserver/mapscript by Tamas Szekeres — last modified 2006-08-07 17:38

The purpose of this change is to get a significant performance boost by removing "big locks" from the code. It would add a significal improvement of the applications having high number of multiple threads executed simultaneously. This activity could bring in a more feasible support for some application models not really aimed at now like Microsoft ASP.NET. May result in higher clarity of the code by determining the code segments affected by multiple threads.

MS RFC 16: MapScript WxS Services by Frank Warmerdam — last modified 2006-07-14 21:12

Provide MapScript access to WMS/WFS/WCS services for customization.

MS RFC 17: Dynamic Allocation of layers, styles, classes and symbols by Frank Warmerdam — last modified 2007-09-05 15:04

Modify the MapServer core libraries so that lists of layers, classes and styles are dynamic, not fixed to compile limits MS_MAXCLASSES, MS_MAXSTYLES, MS_MAXLAYERS and MS_MAXSYMBOLS.

MS RFC 18: Encryption of passwords in mapfiles by Daniel Morissette — last modified 2006-08-11 12:35

This proposal provides a mechanism to protect database connection passwords used inside mapfiles by encrypting them instead of including them in plain text.

MS RFC 19: Style & Label attribute binding by Stephen Lime — last modified 2006-09-25 18:15

Presently MapServer supports binding of label and style properties for a few select attributes (e.g. angle). However, it is cumbersome to add new bindings which leads to unecessarily complex structures and code that is difficult to maintain. This RFC presents ideas to bring a bit of order to that chaos and make expansion of this capability easier to achive.

MS RFC 21: MapServer Raster Color Correction by Frank Warmerdam — last modified 2007-07-13 12:10

To add support to MapServer to apply color correction curves (aka lookup tables) to raster images on the fly.

MS RFC 22a: Feature cache for long running processes and query processing by Tamas Szekeres — last modified 2007-06-26 10:05

Currently the various query operations involve multiple accesses to the data providers which may cause a significant performance impact depending on the providers. In the first phase all of the features in the given search area are retrieved and the index of the relevant shapes are stored in the result cache. In the second phase the features in the result cache are retrieved form the provider one by one. Retaining the shapes in the memory we could eliminate the need of the subsequent accesses to the providers and increase the overall performance of the query. Implementing the cache requires a transformation of the data between the data provider and the client. From this aspect it is desirable to provide a framework to implement this transformation in a higher level of abstraction.

[first draft] MS RFC 24: Mapscript memory management by Umberto Nicoletti — last modified 2007-04-24 04:02

Describe an implementation of a unified memory management solution for mapscript that addresses current issues with garbage collection in the hosting languages (c#, java, perl, python,ruby,tcl).

MS RFC 23: Project Steering Committee Guidelines by Stephen Lime — last modified 2008-01-25 11:06

This document describes how the MapServer Project Steering Committee (formerly the Technical Steering Committee) determines membership, and makes decisions on MapServer technical and project managment issues.

MS RFC 24: Mapscript memory management by Umberto Nicoletti — last modified 2008-01-10 09:00

Describe an implementation of a unified memory management solution for mapscript that addresses current issues with garbage collection in the hosting languages (c#, java, perl, python,ruby,tcl).

MS RFC 25: Align MapServer pixel and extent models with OGC models (DRAFT) by Stephen Lime — last modified 2007-10-23 23:39

At present MapServer uses different pixel and extent model than defined by OGC services such as WCS and WMS. Although it has been dealt with successfully over the years the differences have led to various subtle bugs. In addition, it is not clear that users completely understand the differences which again can lead to subtle problems. This RFC proposes to update the MapServer models to match those presented in OGC service specifications.

MS RFC 26: Ver. 5 Terminology Cleanup by Stephen Lime — last modified 2007-07-16 12:16

Mapserver terminology is mostly good and consistent, with a few exceptions. The two that generate the most confusion and TRANSPARENCY (layerObj) and various scale referencing parameters (e.g. MINSCALE).

MS RFC 27: Label Priority by Daniel Morissette — last modified 2007-09-05 14:58

This RFC introduces a new PRIORITY parameter on the LABEL object to control the order in which labels are rendered.

MS RFC 28: Redesign of LOG/DEBUG output mechanisms by Daniel Morissette — last modified 2007-09-05 15:00

MapServer 4.10 and older used to have multiple LOG/DEBUG output mechanisms that did not play well together. In order to improve the usability of the software this RFC proposes a new LOG/DEBUG output mechanism with more control on the output location (logfile or stderr) and that works under all supported web servers.

MS RFC 29: Dynamic Charting Capability by Daniel Morissette — last modified 2007-09-06 05:14

This RFC proposes the addition of simple dynamic charting capability in MapServer 5.0 based on the patch proposed by Thomas Bonfort in ticket #1800.

MS RFC 30: Support for WMS 1.3.0 by Daniel Morissette — last modified 2007-09-05 15:02

This RFC documents the changes required in order to upgrade MapServer's OGC WMS support to version 1.3.0 of the specification.

MS RFC 31: Loading MapServer Objects from Strings by Stephen Lime — last modified 2007-09-20 16:01

This RFC addresses the ability of the MapServer tokenizer to work from strings as well as files. It covers mapscript and url-based string sources.

MS RFC 32: Support for Anti-Grain Geometry (AGG) Rendering Engine by Stephen Lime — last modified 2007-07-24 15:24

This RFC details the addition of AGG, a high-performance 2-D rendering engine, to MapServer as an output option.

MS RFC 33: Removing msLayerWhichItems() function from maplayer.c by Stephen Lime — last modified 2007-07-24 15:24

This RFC details removal of the function msLayerWhichItems in maplayer.c and the resulting changes to the rest of the code base. This change is necessary in support of feature caching for long running processes and to facilitate one-pass queries.

MS RFC 34: MapServer Release Manager and Release Process by Daniel Morissette — last modified 2007-07-19 16:19

This RFC documents the MapServer Release Manager role and the phases of MapServer's Release Process.

MS RFC 35: Standards Compliance Enforcement by Frank Warmerdam — last modified 2007-12-07 14:04

This RFC introduces a mechanism to tell mapserver to enforce OGC standards compliance, or alternatively to be permissive. It also details short term adjustments to handling of the STYLE= required parameter in MapServer 5.

MS RFC 36: Simplified template support for query output by Stephen Lime — last modified 2007-11-19 23:52

 

MS RFC 37: MapServer Spatial Reference Improvements and Additions by Howard Butler — last modified 2007-11-01 16:11

This RFC details optional improvements to MapServer's Spatial Reference description, acquisition, and definition for LAYERs.

MS RFC 38: Native Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Driver for MapServer by Howard Butler — last modified 2007-11-13 21:06

To provide a read-only, native MapServer driver that connects to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (henceforth called SQL Server) on Windows as a PLUGIN datasource driver.

MS RFC39: Support of WMS/SLD named styles in MapServer by Yewondwossen Assefa — last modified 2007-11-21 08:06

Add Support of WMS/SLD named styles in MapServer

MS RFC 40: Support label text transformations by thomas bonfort — last modified 2007-12-03 07:27

This RFC proposes the addition of simple label text transformations, such as text centering or conditional line wrapping based on line lengths

MS RFC 41: Support of WCS 1.1.x Protocol by Frank Warmerdam — last modified 2008-04-16 00:09

It is proposed to extend MapServer to support the WCS 1.1 protocol. MapServer already supports the WCS 1.0 protocol, but WCS 1.1 is significantly different.

MS RFC 42: Support of Cookies Forwarding by Julien-Samuel Lacroix — last modified 2008-04-30 09:47

This RFC propose to extend MapServer to forward HTTP Cookies when doing OWS requests.

MS RFC 43: Direct tile generation for Google Maps API by Daniel Morissette — last modified 2008-05-02 08:55