6.1. Downloading the Demonstration Data

This section will walk you through the process of acquiring some fairly simple data for the U.S. state of Minnesota. In order to keep things simple, you will use a well-known MapServer demonstration dataset. The MapServer web site always has copies of the latest versions of MapServer software available as well as demonstration datasets and applications.

First, go to http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/dload.html. Beside the latest download version file, you will see a link to demo. This links to a ZIP file called workshop.zip.

The full path is http://maps.dnr.state.mn.us/mapserver_demos/workshop.zip. Now, download, and unzip the contents of this file. All you really need is the workshop/data folder.

Where you unzip doesn't matter, but you need to ensure that the folders contained in the archive are recreated when unzipped. This is usually the default for your archive software. In Winzip, this option is called Use Folder Names.