[SoC] Google SoC participation

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Néstor Morales Hernández wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> my name is Néstor. I've just heard about Google Summer of Code. I think 
> I could contribute to your project. I've read your proposals, and I 
> think I could be useful in the "OpenStreetMap data import tool 
> improvement" task from OpenRouter 2009. So, before sending an 
> appoinment, I would like to concrete the idea to a better defined one.
> 
> Waiting for your answers,
> 
> Néstor Morales Hernández

Hi Néstor,

I am forwarding this to the OpenRouter and pgRouting list as there are 
people there that might have comments and may not be on the SoC list.

I will also add some comment here that might be helpful. I think this 
would be a great contribution.

1) We current have a working code base with pgRouting. This is a routing 
engine running inside the postgresql database and it draws its data from 
tables that need to be built and populated with appropriate data, in 
this case from OSM.

2) A second project that we might have running in parallel is the 
development of a new code base. We have been having a discussion on this 
with Ashraf Hossain and others on the list. Assuming Ashraf gets his 
project going and would like to participate we might be able coordinate 
your two activities which I think would be very exciting.

3) That as part of your project we define an open abstract schema that 
can support all the data needed for routing. And we then import OSM to 
this schema and we write specific loaders from our schema to pgRouting 
and any other routes that we develop like the work Ashraf is planning. I 
think this could be done initially in postgres/postgis but there might 
be other formats we should consider.

Questions to the list:

What is anything has been done regarding OSM and pgRouting imports?

Ashraf, if you code is being contributed to OpenRouter, would you be 
interested in working with Néstor on the connecting OSM to your planned 
network builder?

Thoughts on item 3).

Best regards,
   -Steve