To be able to create choropleth maps in geobrowsers you'll need polygon data for the geographical units you want to map. These polygons can then be coloured according to a statistical value. If you want to store geographic features in an open source database, you have two options: PostGIS / PostgreSQL or MySQL Spatial . MySQL has limited GIS support compared to PostGIS, but I want to test if it's sufficient for thematic mapping. I will recommend two software packages: XAMPP and FWTools. XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and PERL. FWTools is an open source GIS binary containing MapServer , GDAL/OGR , Proj.4 , OpenEV , OGDI and Phyton. Maybe more than you need, but it is an easy install. The Swiss Army Knife is the GDAL/OGR library. I have my boundary polygons stored in a shapefile. There is no MySQL command which enables you to upload spatial data to a database table (this can be done with PostGIS using the shp2pqsql command) . If you ha...