I am going to migrate our current TileCache WMS-T server to a current and up to date GeoServer / GeoWebCache product. We use Mapnik as our rendering back end and I would love to keep it this way. I run several layers written in Mapniks proprietary XML-Styling language… Therefor it would be wise to keep that.
Has anyone done this so far?
My idea so far is to run a lightweight WMS Server in front of Mapnik and then use that server to feed my GeoServers Tile storage….
Any other ideas?
Best Answer
It is possible to "proxy" WMS queries through to an alternative service, using the "Cascading WMS" feature in GeoServer. It is essentially going to look like a store inside GeoServer, but it'll look like a part of GeoServer / GeoWebCache to external users.
That offers a few management advantages, but there are some limitations, given in the documentation page I linked to. It looks like those limitations shouldn't be a problem in your case, except perhaps the authentication issue if your Mapnik server has some authentication lock-down.