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Rainer Barthels shares a method for getting better geocodes in MapPoint than the built-in routine by using the return values from FindAddressResults

Read the full article here: http://www.mp2kmag.com/articles.asp?...AddressResults

Part II of the article has now appeared at: http://www.mp2kmag.com/articles.asp?...AddressResults

We've also found lots of discrepancies in Canadian data. See http://www.infinitegravity.ca/MapPoint.asp for a short article on it.

We've been spending a _huge_ amount of CPU time tracking down these problems for the whole of Canada. As we go along, we're creating cross-reference data to map from Canada-Post standard formats to what MapPoint wants to see to match correctly. At the same time, we're recording the coordinates for faster lookup in the next time we need to map an address.

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Richard Vandenberg, Infinite Gravity Data Services

It seems like it would be more efficient to just invest in a real geocoder, although I don't know what is available for Canada. But how many streets can there be, eh?

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Hi,

I guess I am a little perplexed when I read the article concerning improving Mappoint geocoding. Unless I have missed something, this article only seems to present some kind of basic methods that are explained in the online help.
I have tested the code available for download and it works properly. But it doesn't seem to go further than informing the user on the way MapPoint has geocode each point.
The company I work for also developped an application which lets the user improve MapPoint geocoding. I guess we first geocode the different points the same way that it is done in the code linked to the article. And we also give a grid as a result of the geocoding process, with color alerts which makes it more readable. this grid contains different informations such as the way MapPoint has geocoded the point, informations on the point itself (in our case, we use this application to geocode clients so it gives us information about our clients) etc... The difference is that this grid is not a simple static grid. As it shows the different levels of geocoding (street, city, post code, country or even no geocoding at all...), the user can double clik on each row to modify the geocoding given by MapPoint. It is also possible to directly act on the map by moving the pushpin associated with each geocoded point.
That is true that if you have a huge database with a great amount of data, it is sometime a hard job to do, because you need to check all the points. But I guess it is important to let the user decide where he wants the point to be placed.
I think the best thing would be that Microsoft improve themself the part of the algorithm which is supposed to find the adress. The article gives specific exemples concerning cities which have the same post code in germany. It is in fact kind of hard case to solve. But we can even consider some small errors in the adress that MapPoint cannot detect. Here is one; the second adress has only a "-" added :
10 rue des Belles Feuilles, 75016, Paris is geocoded on post code
10 rue des Belles-Feuilles, 75016, Paris, is geocoded on street
I don't know how MapPoint performs the research of the point corrsponding to the adress but it is clear that the search engine could be improved, only by verifying the degree of similarity between two given adresses. And I guess this would be the best way to obtain a really good geocoding tool...

Take care everyone !

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Victor DUBOIS
Map Tools Manager
FDV CONCEPT
rd@fdvconcept.com
www.fdvconcept.com

This tool is very interesting but it seems odd that country names should be in a 'one letter' format (such as "D" for "Germany"). In Europe that would not work.

Why not use the full name, as MapPoint understands that.
If it's not possible to change, what logic is used? (e.g. De for Denmark?)

If I want to test the application properly on my dataset, I would really need and welcome any response.

Kind regards

Pieter Joost Verhoef
pjverhoef@marketpoint.nl
http://www.marketpoint.nl

I used ISO 3361 codes for the country, because I think this is a standard.
Have a look at

http://userpage.chemie.fu-berlin.de/.../ISO_3166.html

Sorry, this comes with next version. There you can select ISOAlphaCode,
ISOAlpha2Code and car-licence number.

In the moment this is only licence-number. (D=Germany, DK=Denmark,
A=Austria, GB=Great Britain, CH = Suisse, E = Spain, NL = Netherlands, B = Belgium, P = Portugal, L = Luxembourg, I = Italy, F = Fracnce, USA, CAN)

I found this very good web site on MapPoint:

http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/

Just check it out !

Hi,

I wish I could use this tool but I can't.
I'm using MS Acess 2002 (XP) and Mappoint Western Europe 2004

I manage to select the database and the table
I manage to select the good field (even if I had trouble to find out that double type was réel double in Franch
But when I continue to the next step I got an error message.

The translation is somrthink close to "wrong class chain".
Then none of the adresses (from your customer.mdb file) will be geocoded. One or all adresses geocoding will fail.
I tried to put the geocode.exe in the mappoint folder then to an outside folder. But unsuccessful.
Where did I f$*^!ed up ?

Please Help !!! Thanks !

Hi,

I corrected the tool for MP2004. You can make an ftp-download from

server:www.free-routing.de
user:anonymous
path:/fr/free-routing.de

Cheers
Rainer