[OSGeoJapan-discuss] oraGeocoder.ja

[Mario Basa]

Hello.

I am the author of pgGeocoder.ja, a geocoder inside PostgreSQL, and I
just ported it to Oracle and have created oraGeocoder.ja package.

Basically, oraGeocoder is a PL/SQL package that normalizes a Japanese
address and tries to match it with Address tables from the free
Japanese Government data. I tried to make the package as similar as
possible to the Oracle Geocoder (which was never released in Japan)
that returns a Type object as a result of a geocoder request. It not
only gives the X,Y of the address, but also the normalized address
which is very helpful for analytics. Please see the attached
screenshot.

I am releasing it in GPL, and the source of the PL/SQL and
documentation on how to build the tables are here:

https://github.com/mbasa/oraGeocoder

Why Oracle? Well, because there are more Oracle sites here in Japan
than PostgreSQL will ever have. Also it was fun to do :-). I am not
Japanese though (although I have worked with the person who created
the Yahoo Geocoder and geocoder.ja), and there are some addresses that
I do not know how to handle (example: Kyoto).  And I will really be
very thankful for any help on how to make the geocoder more accurate.
Bug reports also will be appreciated very much.

Thanks, and hope oraGeocoder.ja (as well as pgGeocoder.ja) will be
useful, especially to those trying to help the Tsunami victims.

Mario Basa.


p.s. I am thinking of making a QGIS plug-in for this as a next little
project since the Google geocoder limits only 2000 requests a day.
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