I could really use some help preparing files for geocoding by address.
I'm about ready to ask for Arcview, which another department here has, and
forget about Mapinfo.
I use Mapinfo 5.5.
I have a street segment file, Bexrdsl.TAB, which is mappable (works just
fine as a map layer, I can also make street labels appear, etc.).
BUT I never have managed to geocode with it and get more than a scattering
of hits.
This thing is inherited from another department, who got it from the Council
of Governments...
The file I want to geocode contains addresses. This is survey data in file
"WITR" for short. Field Q17 is the home address field.
At first I thought my problem was that:
Bexrdsl.TAB did not have the Street column and ToLeft, ToLeft, FromRight,
ToRight fields set up with the prescribed field names and sequence of
fields.
That sequence is explained in Mapinfo Products Knowledge Base item question
"When geocoding, no address ranges are visible?" which is at
http://testdrive.mapinfo.com/techsupp/miprod.nsf/5c41496d5951a49c852562b5004
f3a44/605ee801f7dcb80085256755004e9f78?OpenDocument
and that on-line item references the 5.0 "reference manual" at a page which
is NOT the same in the 5.5 "users guide".
Instead the appropriate columns were in a different sequence with different
names.
So I modified the file to be set up in accord with the Knowledge Base
article.
First try, with field name "streetname". Second try, with field name
"street". [The reference shows it both ways in different paragraphs. Who
knows which is right? The 5.5 Users Guide doesn't show the prescribed
fields at all.] I indexed the "streetname" field, and re-indexed it after
changing it to "street".
Geocoding still doesn't work right! One match out of 434 in automatic mode
(matched two null lines). No more matches in interactive mode, and the
street numbers still don't display!
Mapinfo tries to match the house number (left characters of the address) to
the street name:
The geocoding dialog box has:
Geocode tabe WITR
Using column Q17
Boundary column blank
Search table Bexrdsl
For objects in column Street
In interactive mode, the WITR file entry "1500 Mission Road" gets streets
displayed beginning
"10th"
"10th"
"10th"
"12th"
"12th"
I have verified that "Fromleft" and "Toleft", "FromRight" and "Toright" in
the Bexrdsl file are populated with integers.
This result does not change when I check or uncheck the options to try
substitutions or to use the closest address number.
It seems obvious to me that there are more undocumented specifications
necessary to make geocoding by address work.
Do the prescribed fields in Bexrdsl (Street, FromLeft, etc) have to be at
the left of the table?
Do I have to separate the house number and the street name in the table to
be geocoded (table WITR in my case)? If so, what is the required format of
that table? (It must have some specific requirements since the dialog box
for geocoding does not include an option to designate a house number field.)
Is there a magic reference in the 5.5 "reference"? If so, to hell with it;
I had to buy my own users guide since IT here was not responsive.
Ian Straus
Market Research Specialist
VIA Metropolitan Transit
San Antonio, Texas
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