MS RFC 38: Native Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Driver for MapServer

Author

Howard Butler

Contact

hobu.inc at gmail.com

Status

Implemented

Version

5.2

Purpose

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.

Background

I.S. Consulting has donated a native driver modeled on the PostGIS driver to support SQL Server 2008’s newly added spatial capabilities. This new driver will only be available on the Windows platform, and it will only be available as a PLUGIN datasource driver. No additional enumerations or conditional includes will be added to the MapServer codebase to support this driver.

Usage Details

The driver is a PLUGIN layer, and uses the PLUGIN syntax described in RFC 8 [1] to define relevant layer information:

LAYER
  NAME "Roads"
  CONNECTIONTYPE PLUGIN
  PLUGIN "C:\ms4w\plugins\msplugin_mssql2008.dll"

  CONNECTION "server=mysqlserver2008.com;uid=dbusername;pwd=dbpassword;database=Roads Database;Integrated Security=false"

  DATA "the_geom from roads"
  TYPE LINE

  STATUS ON

  PROJECTION
      "init=epsg:4326"
  END

  CLASS
    STYLE
       COLOR 0 0 255
       WIDTH 8
     END
  END

END

Files Affected

A single file, mapmssql2008.c will be added to subversion. It will only be compiled on windows using the ‘nmake /f makefile.vc plugins’ command when options describing the ODBC libraries are switched on.

Backward Compatibility Issues

All work described in this RFC will provide optional capabilities to MapServer and no backward compatibility issues are expected.

Documentation

This RFC will stand as primary documentation for the feature until such time as the methods and practices described in this document are integrated into the regular MapServer documentation framework.

Intellectual Property

This work will become a regular part of MapServer and will be released under MapServer’s Open Source license.

[1] http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/development/rfc/ms-rfc-8/