[OSM-dev] Data source for robot

[Frederik Ramm]

Peter,

Peter Budny wrote:
> If route relations are not required, then what are
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relation:route#Road_Routes for?

There's two reasons why people do this.

One is that it allows them to easily access all ways that form a certain 
road (simply request the relation and all members). This saves them from 
having to use XAPI where they could put in a query for all objects 
tagged ref=...; and I can understand why people want this but I still 
think this is a misuse of relations (to overcome shortcomings in the 
API). (See also the related albeit not identical 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relations/Relations_are_not_Categories).

The second, and entirely legitimate, reason is when several routes use 
the same road, so you cannot put a proper "ref" tag on the road (or you 
would have to use the dreaded semicolon).

But if, as I suspect, your plan was merely to collect everything tagged 
ref=<something> and then stuff that into a route relation called 
<something>, that's not an added value in my book.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"