I'm looking at implementing RFC 74 "Includes from non-file connections," i.e., using a database query to bring in a section of mapfile, as an alternative to the INCLUDE filename that's in there already.
Some interesting and powerful capabilities hinted at in the RFC, such as, "A common use case is providing a custom classed layer for an individual." and "Another common case is dynamically classifying a layer as the data changes. With SQL, a text string can be calculated on the fly from the data itself, by looking at the DISTINCT values of a dataset to generate the classes that will be used to display that data." There have been some threads in this space that lead me to believe this feature could be a good thing to have around. It might serve as the foundation for providing for non-database sources for mapfile includes in the future. I'd invite interested parties to look at the RFC and comment back with possible additional use cases, to see how well the prescribed mapfile syntax for this supports those uses. Thanks, Robert H.
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