<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;">Borrowed from previous thread:<br><br><pre>><i> ... which remembers me something I wanted to mention already earlier:<br></i>><i> Talking about routing leads immediately to a discussion about road<br></i>><i> networks, roads, lanes, highway hierarchy, speed, etc.. Of course<br></i>><i> routing in road networks is the largest use case and it makes a quite<br></i>><i> abstract topic easier to explain. But there are many other types of<br></i>><i> networks, and I think a routing library (engine?) should also care about<br></i>><i> those. You agree, don't you?<br></i><br> Do the Router participants want the<br>discussion and the initiative to include<br>non-transportation networks? Or should <br>that be a separate list and separate effort?<br><br>I'd like for FOSS to tackle utility infrastructure<br>design and management (re:
closed-source<br>examples GE Smallworld, Intergraph G/Technology,<br>the ArcFM application based in ESRI ArcGIS,<br>some offerings, I think, from Bentley and<br>Autodesk).<br><br>The types of networks:<br>electric transmission or distribution<br>gas<br>telecom, various wire models<br>water<br>wastewater<br><br>This is a huge subject-matter on its own,<br>but it has routing requirements that may overlap<br>the discussion here.<br><br>Generally, there are point-based and line-<br>based features that together maintain a<br>connectivity that is independent of whether<br>they have coincident (or any) geometry<br><br>The feature objects typically have methods<br>for reporting their cost in the network,<br>based on internal state. An example:<br>preference for a stored length over a line<br>geometry measured length. The feature may<br>also report that it is "closed" so routing<br>cannot travel trough it at this moment.<br><br>Perhaps this implies that a
larger, non-<br>transportation architecture "subscribes" to<br>this Open Router architecture, where features<br>use Open Router's classes and methods to <br>build and maintain the feature's connection<br>state. Then the feature automatically <br>participates in routing.<br><br>As this Router architecture develops, I'll<br>evaluate its capabilities on the basis of<br>utility infrastructure requirements, and<br>report any modifications that might be<br>helpful. The developer community at large<br>can decide if these fit the scope or not.<br><br>I think I'll also go read about "Boost Graph"<br><br>thanks,<br>Robert H. <br></pre><br></td></tr></table>