Robert, Welcome to OpenLayers! You have several options for getting your GIS data into OL. The size of your shapefile and the number of features you are managing will most likely drive what format will work best in your situation. If you are working with tens or even hundreds of points, you may be able to get away with converting the shapefile to a KML or text file and loading it directly in OL. If you've got several hundred or thousands of points, you will probably want to involve some server side processes for managing what gets thrown at the browser. You could easily use a shapefile data store in GeoServer to render the points as a WMS layer. The benefit of this approach is that your GIS users will also be able to tap into the WMS feed within their GIS software for real-time access to your data. If GeoServer is not an option, you could load the shapefile data into a PostGIS or MySQL database and use PHP to generate only the relevant bits of JSON or KML on the fly.
Let me know if you need any help or further clarification and best of luck! BRYAN ----- Bryan R. McBride, GISP http://www.bryanmcbride.com bryanmcbride.com -- View this message in context: http://osgeo-org.1803224.n2.nabble.com/First-project-for-Openlayers-newbie-HELP-tp5097592p5098619.html Sent from the OpenLayers Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Users mailing list [email protected] http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/users
