11.3. Continuing Education

The examples in this chapter barely scratch the surface of MapServer capabilities. You can get an idea of the other kinds of functions that are available by looking at other MapServer applications. The MapServer web site maintains an application gallery at http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/gallery.html.

It shows several examples of applications people have built, including sites that allow querying, data entry, searching, etc.

There are also quite a few developments under way that will make MapServer applications easier to develop. These are often called application development frameworks. They require some more advanced setup to get started, because of their

Figure 11-18. The final web page showing an interactive reference map

dependency on web programming languages (e.g., PHP). Here are a few application development tools:

• Chameleon and MapLab (http://www.maptools.org)

• Flexible Internet Spatial Template (FIST) (http://datashare.gis.unbc.ca)

• MapBender (http://www.mapbender.org)

There has also been increasing interest in integrating MapServer functionality with a content management system (CMS), groupware, or wiki. Tikiwiki (http://tikiwiki.org/tiki-map.phtml) is one example of this.