mapserver queries don't incorporate maxFeatures

[bartvde@…]

Here is how things work :
- the user does a wfs request
- in is translated in mapserver query : the query does not take into account 
the maxfeatures.
- The MAXFEATURES is taken into account when generating the resulting   gml file
 
So yes, It ends up doing the query on all the shapes in your case.
 
I think we should modify mapserver low level query functions to be able to pass 
a maxfeature parameter. Some of the query functions have a mode (single or 
mulitple), and this notion should be extended to support a maxfeature. Once 
this is done the wfs interface can take advantage of it.

[sdlime]

maxfeatures is one of those holdover parameters from the shapefile only days. 
It's only supported for drawing shapefiles (that I know of). It's a needed 
parameter, but I'm not sure if the existing parameter should be used of if 
something else should be added. I may renter this bug as a more general issue.

Steve 

[assefa]

*** Bug 552 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[bartvde@…]

Also, if the interface is gonna be changed, it might be worthwhile 
incorporating both maxFeatures and startPosition.

startPosition is now in the Catalog 2.0 specs and will make it to the new WFS 
specs for sure.

This makes it possible to fetch records in sets ("paging").

I do not know if this is technically possible in Mapserver at the moment.

[sdlime]

Good ideas. It is technically possible, but wouldn't be as efficient because a 
result set isn't normally cached (although there is a savequery function that 
will write a query to disk for just such a purpose). At worse you just to the 
query multiple times and choose the records you need.

Steve

[bartvde@…]

Setting target to future.