It really depends what you need to do with the data.

For example if you only need to display vector points on top of a base map then you can create a very simple server-side script (in Python, .NET, PHP) to publish spatial data from your database. The ability of PostGIS to server GeoJSON makes this trivial.

Serving single features as KML and creating bounding boxes may also be more easily handled directly with a simple script and a database. Premade tilecaches also allow (possibly) simpler server side software such as TileStache.

MapServer or GeoServer in these cases would be a huge overhead for little benefit. And there is a huge overhead in configuring and maintaining either of these applications and their associated dependencies - especially if you need to deploy on a shared server or have restricted access.

As Ian mentions there are lots of benefits of using map server software. Probably the main benefit is the cartographic options for displaying data dynamically. OGC standards, metadata, caching, security, different formats, printing etc. are also then available.

It really depends what you need to do with the data.

For example if you only need to display vector points on top of a base map then you can create a very simple server-side script (in Python, .NET, PHP) to publish spatial data from your database. The ability of PostGIS to serve GeoJSON makes this trivial.

Serving single features as KML and creating bounding boxes may also be more easily handled directly with a simple script and a database. Premade tilecaches also allow (possibly) simpler server side software such as TileStache.

MapServer or GeoServer in these cases would be a huge overhead for little benefit. And there is a huge overhead in configuring and maintaining either of these applications and their associated dependencies - especially if you need to deploy on a shared server or have restricted access.

As Ian mentions there are lots of benefits of using map server software. Probably the main benefit is the cartographic options for displaying data dynamically. OGC standards, projections, attribute queries, legends, metadata, caching, security, different spatial formats, different image formats, printing etc. are also then available.