Detailed street coordinates?

Is it possible to get the list of coordinates for a specific street in MapPoint?

(For example a street with a curve should at least have 3 coordinates: start point , bending point and end point)

(I'm using C#)

Quick answer: no.

The road data is not directly available via the programming interface.


Richard

Thanks for the answer.

Any idea if it can be accessed indirectly. Via Access (is it an access database?) or any other application?

Hi,

you can eventually search for a street with a house number of 1, then a large number, but problem is that you not know in advance what the highest number is in a a street. Maybe this idea throws up other idea's

MapPoint makes assumptions about street number distribution, so this could be problematic (but still possible, perhaps). Ie. the database has the street numbers at the start and end of both sides of a street. It then assumes they are evenly distributed along the street.
Hmm, maybe this would make you system more reliable, Wilfried?

Richard

Hi Richard,

Yes good idea. But which of the files is the database, there is an *.mdb but is password protected, also a few *.dat files, but is the format of it somewhere documented ?

The TIGER data has street beginning and ending #'s iirc.

You could get that (it's free) to get your street # start and end, but on the other hand, I think the TIGER data itself may get you your coords you're seeking. I don't know if MS uses TIGER or GDT as ESRI does, but in general, I believe access to the MapPoint database is forbidden in the EULA, NOT sure on that, but I recall wanting to look under the hood at one point and some roadsign saying 'go back, do not enter' ! heh

I myself find it interesting what you're seeking there, I'm not the most spatially oriented person (yet), I'm guessing since a street is not always straight, let alone the curvature of the earth aspect, that one could only seek integral data for the coords ? I don't know.

But TIGER data from US census does give you start and end + lat/lon iirc.

Tim Miltz
Insert_any-organization-still-using-vb6-and-visual-fortran_here

Microsoft get their data from Navteq.

TIGER data might be free, but it is not as up to date as MapPoint's.


Richard