[OSM-dev] Inserting OSM data

[Andreas Höschler]

Hi,

>> we are collecting huge amounts of GPS-tracks with a fleet of vehicles
>> with on-board computers. [...] We have to maintain our own
>> database of tracks, add properties like a so a called pickupCondition,
>> which determines how good a track is (e.g. paved, muddy, never use it
>> when it's raining,...).
>
> Do you store all the tracks, or do you conflate them into road axis?
>
> I mean: if a truck has gone through a road twelve times, do you store
> twelve lines or just one? Is there a way to get just one line per road?

Yes! The user importing the track data in our system is responsible for 
selecting only those records that make up a way. If this is not 
convenient he can leave the track in the background and not at all use 
the data directly but create the way manually in a click, click, 
click,... manner. We can also provide functonlity in out app to first 
specifiy an existing (start) node and then do the click, click, click 
... thing so that the newly created way has a defined binding to the 
existing street data. Thus the data we are producing is already of high 
value (could directly be inserted into the public OSM database).

>> • our users cannot use the official OSM editor for several reasons (to
>> complicated, no direct access to our tracks,...)
>
> Depending on your Java expertise, you could program some JOSM plugin.
> Just an idea, though.

None Java expertise. Unfortunately! We are doing everything in 
Objective-C! :-)

>
>> For that we need some kind of TCP-based XML interface so that we could
>> send a track in some XML format to a TCP socket and get back the IDs
>> assigned to objects by the public OSM database server. Only that would
>> allow us the assign the returned IDs to our private database objects
>> and thus avoid data duplication. Is there such an API (TCP-socket
>> based)?
>
> Looky here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6
>
> Whenever you (successfully) upload a new way, you get the way ID in
> return. No problem there.

Wow, I believe that's whatI was looking for!! Scanning this page ...

Thanks a lot so far,

  Andreas