Change behaviour of STATUS DEFAULT in WMS interface

[bartvde@…]

There have been discussions before about adding something to prevent some 
layers from being listed/served via WMS. 

Perhaps we could use this in combination with your warning idea??? (i.e. we 
produce the warning for status default, and if someone really knows what 
they're doing then they can hide their layers that have status default to avoid 
the warning.)

So:

a) if user has status Default for a layer and performs a GetCapabilities 
request, he will get a warning his capabilities.

b) if he sees this, he can make sure this layer will not be exported to the WMS 
interface (by using DUMP FALSE or something like this?) in his MAP file.

[assefa]

Any opinon on what to do with this for 4.4 release ? I definitly don't think 
we should add any new parameter/functionnality before the release. I also feel 
that there need to be a more broader discussion before doing something on this.

[assefa]

*** Bug 727 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[dmorissette]

There is already bug 337 discussing a mechanism to hide layers in capabilities,
so let's keep those discussions there.

The current bug should be only about *possibly* producing a warning for layers
with status default in capabilities. This is easy enough to do, and since layers
with status default cannot be turned off which is kind of against the spirit of
the WMS spec, I think it might not be a bad idea to produce a warning. I say we
could add this warning right away in 4.4. What do you think Assefa?

[assefa]

Fine with me. I will close the bug after I added the warning. what should a
warning be (is it for the client or for the one setting the server):
 
WARNING: The layer name xxx has it status set to MS_DEFAULT and will always be
displayed when doing a GetMap request  "

WARNING: The layer named xxx  will always be displayed when doing a GetMap request

 or other ?
 

[dmorissette]

Ooppps... sorry, I set target FUTURE by accident. Setting it back to 4.4 for now
since the warning seems straightforward enough to add.

[dmorissette]

Since the warning appears inside the Layer element, you probably don't need to
worry about the name (I'm not sure we can output it easily anyway). Here is
another suggestion:

"WARNING: This layer has its status set to DEFAULT and will always be displayed
when doing a GetMap request even if it is not requested by the client. This is
not in line with the expected behavior of a WMS server. Using status ON or OFF
is recommended."

I suspect that some users who want to include a copyright notice or something
like that won't apreciate this comment showing up in their capabilities, but
that will be addressed when we fix bug 337, in a later release.

[assefa]

Fixed as per comment #6.