wms - How to handle a geotiff map together with points with OpenLayers (or other libraries)?

I create a lot of printed maps using various applications (ArcGIS, QGIS, Microstation, Illustrator etc). Sometimes I'd like to turn this map somewhat interactive on the web.

What I'm looking for is a simple way to turn a huge geotiff into tiles and present them in OpenLayers (or similar) together with some points or polygons on top. If it wasn't for the points and polygons I guess I could have sticked to OpenLayers using zoomify tiles.

I want to stay in the local projection and because of that I guess it has to be OpenLayers since Modest Maps etc only handles the spherical Mercator projection?

Is there a tool for slicing up my tiff into tiles and then presented so that OpenLayers can handle it together with other point features in the same projection?

Do I need a TMS/WMS? A tileserver?

Answer

Answer to all your needs is Geoserver and OpenLayers.

1. 
   

   You can turn all your Geotiffs into WMS in any projection you need.

   
   


2. 
   

   GeoServer has GeoWebCache, which will allow you to very easily cache tiles and serve them to Openlayers.

   
   


3. 
   
   

   Geoserver will let you serve out Polygons and Points too. It support almost all modern out put formats like GML, KML etc. all of which can be easily consumed by OpenLayers. Geoserver accepts a variety of input formats for vector data like Shapefiles, PostGRE Sql, MySql , etc.

   
   


4. 
   

   Geoserver will accept your Geotiff. And you can eithr serve them as WMS tiles, or choose to cache the tiles using GeoWebCache which comes with GeoServer.

   
   

Let me know if you have questions about specifics of each of these points.