[OSM-dev] Namefinder - what to do

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

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Gervase Markham wrote:
| Nick Black wrote:
|> If we create an index on the way_tags k & v column we can directly
|> search live data and retain the vast majority of the functionality of
|> the namefinder search.
|
| I realise this is a complaint without an offer of help to fix it, but...
|
| Will this have the effect of speeding up NameFinder? I find it takes on
| average 30 seconds to return results. Given that we don't have
| comprehensive postcode lookup, it's really important that
| www.openstreetmap.org has a box where you can paste an address and have
| the map take you, quickly, to roughly the right place.

Ironically, the namefinder's own postcode lookup system works really
quite well (albeit slowly), but isn't available on the OSM home page.

Try entering a postcode here:
http://www.frankieandshadow.com/osm/

It works by the really scary method of doing a Google search of a
postcode, parsing the results for something that looks like an address,
then searching for the address.

It does give false positives, though. So if you search for a postcode of
a street that is not in the database, it will often find a street with a
similar name somewhere else in the country.

Robert (Jamie) Munro
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