[RouterGeocoder] Routing Data Schema

[Daniel Kastl]

Hi Steve

First of all, thanks a lot for starting something really practical on
this list. Hope you had some hours of sleep left.
>
> Questions, Concerns, Issues, Missing information?
Without going very much into details (it's already late here), my first
thought reading your schema was: do we want to see OpenRouter as a
vehicle navigation library, or do we see it more general as a library
for network analysis?
With pgRouting we tried to keep it open to any kind of network, and I
heard for example about someone using it for fire prediction. Another
request recently was about nautical navigation. And I think there are a
lot of networks, which we're not so much aware of.

This said, I know that the main use case is vehicle navigation, and it's
the best example for a demonstration and to explain to non-experts.

I think you're an expert in Navteq data, Steve. And I'm sure the Navteq
model isn't a bad one. I probably would have studied about it more if
they had data available for Japan. So comparing different data sources
is a good idea. I don't think that the OpenStreetMap model is a good one
for routing purpose.

So my question is: do we see the main purpose of OpenRouter in road
navigation? Or do we want a library for spatial network analysis, where
"Shortest Path" search is one core algorithm and vehicle routing is just
a popular use case.

I'm more in favor of the latter. But I agree that we need to primarily
support vehicle routing data.

Hope this made some sense,

Daniel