I have found that Google does a good job with generic data but often a company needs to display their GIS data on a Google Map. This is often the case when the general public is viewing the data and doesn't want to learn how a 'heavy' IMS website works. In this case, I often suggest a Google Map Mashup using a WMS.
The Mashup gives us a few great features:
- Ease of use
- Speed of deployment
- Capacity to scale (if using a cache of generated tiles)
You'll need a few things to get started:
- A place to host the website (this can be 'localhost' if you are developing and testing on the same machine)
- A working WMS (I assume you have one of these if you are trying to create a mashup.)
- A Google Map API key
- A Snippet of code that helps generate the request to the WMS (Found Here).
I have attached a simple example that you will need to put on your server and change the WMS layers.
WMS_Google_Mashup.txt (2.72 kb)