Web Mapping Illustrated

Chapter 6. Analyzing Map Data

Finding data is helpful, but sometimes you need to explore it or do basic manipulation before you're ready to use it in your own maps. This chapter will lead you through acquiring the tools and data for some sample projects. Some of this sample data will be used in examples in other chapters as well. The techniques shown here don't produce lovely maps by themselves, but they can save you immense frustration when you go to use data to create maps.

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.

Warning

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.