Speedup some WMS sources

Hi

just my 2 cents

some WMS can be quite a pain to access, the URL being long and the protocol is unforgiving.
I've discovered recently that some WMS servers can be accessed like the GoogleMaps servers, with X,Y,Z simple URL, and therefore be configured in "onlinemapsources.xml" and not wms_services.xml.

latest MapServer software ( version > 5.0 ) can be polled with Gmap style URL instead of WMS URL:
see this url : tilemode

the URL ends with something like "&layers=XXX&mode=tile&tilemode=gmap&tile=x+y+z"

Another advantage is that it is a bit faster (from my experience). I think its because the WMS server can now cache predefined tiles instead of generating new one at each request of each client.

the software behind the WMS has to be MapServer > 5.0. other server would not work.

The easiest way to test this for your favorite WMS is:
- fetch the GetCapabilities and check if it's a MapServer one.
- if yes, test it by replacing the HTTP parameters by "&layers=XXX&mode=tile&tilemode=gmap&tile=x+y+z" with x,y,z taken from a known googlemap tile

jm