[OSM-dev] Ways without nodes

[andrzej zaborowski]

2009/8/23 Stephan Knauss <osm at stephans-server.de>:
> Hi,
>
> is there any practical use for ways without nodes? There are over 600 of
> such ways in the database, latest one changed 2009-04-16

I also recently noticed that as many as some 7000 out of the 180k
relations there are in the database currently (so ~4%), have no
memebers.  They do have normal tags and they are spaced rather
randomly across the range of relation IDs in the database now so it's
not somebody's run away script.

I asked around on IRC and people did come up with ideas where they may
be justified, such as when your region has roads with ref=1, 2, 3, 4
and 5 but you only have any data at all about roads 1, 2, 3 at the
moment.  You might want to add relations for all five even if there's
no data about 4 and 5 yet.  Then to be able to find the relations you
would need one superrelation to have all the five as members.
Unlikely but possible.

Cheers