Slashgeo

The import cartography blog indicates MapServer 4.8.1 has been released. Honestly, the changelog list is so huge I can't tell you what important features have been added. There's no roadmap on the site either (or I haven't found it).

dct writes "Unanimous recommandation of the MapServer Technical Commitee (MSTC) for a vote by registered member on MapServer joining the Open Spatial Geospatial Foundation. Read more here and here."

Does speed matters? Spatially Adjusted links and discuss a speed comparison of MapServer and ArcIMS. From the blog: "The bigger issue with the speed of both GIS server applications is how and where your data is installed. It is easy to get caught up on these speed claims with server software and they are fun for posting to Digg, but in the real world there are way too many variables to worry about 1/2 a second waiting for a map to be served." Don't miss Hobu's link to a MapServer vs ArcIMS comparison (from Spatially Adjusted comments).

I'd like your opinion on webmapping technology choice. The context is rather simple, my small team will produce a small prototype which must publish geospatial data on a website. The data is already processed and georeferenced. This is a tiny project but we want to choose the best long term webmapping solution possible. When I asked an internal (to the Canadian Government) mailing list about this, I surprisingly received numerous (and sometimes passionate) answers claiming either MapServer or MapGuide Open Source was best. I unexpectedly stumbled onto a sensible topic! From what I've been told, MapServer is fast, reliable, mature while MapGuide OS is easy to use and configure, modern (e.g. AJAX) and has higher scalability. Other opinions/facts for and against MapServer or MapGuide OS were shared along with several websites which demonstrate those technologies. Our webmapping server will run on Debian, therefore excluding ESRI's ArcIMS. Additionally, MapGuide is already operationally supported in my organization, this obviously favors MapGuide OS but does not exclude MapServer if it's really the best option! To be honest, I haven't took the time yet to do a complete assessment of the two avenues. That said, what's your opinion? Thanks!

pmarc writes "The event, named Encontro Nacional dos Usuários de Mapserver held during May, 9-11, in Brasilia, Brazil's capital. Circa 300 people attended the most important event devoted to open Geospatial technologies. During the event, held at the Presidential Palace Auditorium, an interim comitee was formed to formalize the Brazilian OSGeo chapter. OSGeo's Tyler Mitchell was there and left his impressions. Also there were ,Univali's Prof. Rafael Sperb, also from the Brazilian MapServer comunity and Geolivre Linux' Helton Uchôa. I hope they are to post their findings real soon now. The 3rd ENUM was sponsored by several companies and governamental agencies."

The MapServer Team announces the release of version 5.0.0 and lists some of the new features, "This new version also includes dozens of small bug fixes, enhancements and performance improvements. Among the new features are: style and label attribute attribute binding; lookup table-based raster color correction; dynamic charting (pie and bar); explicit label prioritizing; enhanced debugging and logging; dynamic allocation for layers, classes, styles and symbols; improved memory management and garbage collection for MapScript; numerous improvements to OGC specification support, and lots more." First I saw to blog the announcement was Tommy's Blog writing from UGC's Boulder, CO meetings this week.