[postgis-users] Geocoder for PostGIS

[Jean-Denis Giguere]

I think this reference should be important :
http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=8836

This is the Open Location Server reference. It contains interface
definition for geocoding and reverse geocoding according to OGC. They
thought about some interesting points about different way to locate a
building within different country.

IMHO, the most important thing is a good core geocoding service. It
should be easy to add interface in our favorite language after.

Regards,

Jean-Denis

On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 13:18:00 -0500, "David Bitner"
<osgis.lists at gmail.com> said:
> Right now, that I know of, there are three existing PostGIS geocoders
> that have opened thier code to public use/scrutiny:
> 
> Refractions (Tiger Data Only):  http://postgis.refractions.net/download/
> Jocelyn Turcotte & Jean-Denis Giguere:
> http://www.clepsydre.info/opengis/geocoder/geocode.tar.bz2
> My own geocoder (PL/Perl and PL/PGSQL):
> http://foo.gyttja.org/geocoder.tar.gz
> 
> Are there any others that could be added to the list as possible
> stepping off points?
> 
> On 8/15/05, Stephen Woodbridge <woodbri at swoodbridge.com> wrote:
> > Well, I for one would like to see it in postgres/postgis, but that
> > doesn't stop us from building both or at least keep the project oriented
> > toward collecting the information that is needed for any implementation
> > in a common place.
> > For what its worth, Refractions has post a Tiger geocoder on their site,
> > and Jocelyn Turcotte & Jean-Denis Giguere have post another geocoder
> > that works out of postGIS.
> > 
> > I have looked over both of these and Schuyler's major deficit is in any
> > smart address parsing and standardization. This will be the key to
> > making a good geocoder. Parsing and standardization really needs to be
> > dictionary based and pluggable.
> > 
> > Geocoding is nothing more than matching the address someone enters
> > against a database to get a street segment and then interpolate along
> > the segment to the house number  to get the location. The later part is
> > just math, the database does the matching, but the really hard part is
> > converting the address using country specific rules and standards and
> > abbreviations and common miss spellings, etc into standardized tokens
> > that can be matched.
> > 
> > If we can workout the design and algorithm issues, then it can easily be
> > implemented in any language the support these goals.
> > 
> > -Steve
> > 
> > 
> > Paul Scott wrote:
> > >>>>abe.gillespie at gmail.com 08/15/05 4:36 PM >>>
> > >
> > > I disagree with making a universal geocoder depend on PostGIS.  I
> > > think it's a better idea to have it completely independent of PostGIS.
> > >
> > >
> > > I must agree with this sentiment. I, personally, would rather go the
> > > route of a PHP, Perl or Python framework that could instantiate a
> > > country "module" as needed. Something like a core set of functions (db
> > > abstraction, output template etc) with a pluggable module for each
> > > country with the parcel specific data for that country/territory. That
> > > would make it a lot more efficient, as I would say only install the core
> > > + the South Africa module.
> > >
> > > The database should exist as it is, I wouldn't want to get too deep into
> > > that, rather use webservices (SOAP, REST etc) or a hardy abstraction
> > > layer to talk to the data. Let the scripting language do what it does
> > > best, that is parse the data to be useful to "end users", without
> > > putting unnecessary pressure on the db.
> > >
> > > --Paul
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
> > > http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
> > >
> > 
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-- 
  Jean-Denis Giguere
  jdenisgiguere at fastmail.fm