[OSM-talk] Dont remove those negative ID's! Was: "segments showing way off the mapped area"

[Andy Robinson]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org [mailto:talk-
>bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Håkon Enger
>Sent: 03 June 2007 7:45 PM
>To: talk at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Fwd: segments showing way off the mapped area
>
>On Sun, 3 Jun 2007, Nic Roets wrote:
>
>> Could this be related to your observation ?
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: maning sambale <emmanuel.sambale at gmail.com>
>> Date: Jun 1, 2007 10:37 AM
>> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] segments showing way off the mapped area
>> To: talk at openstreetmap.org
>>
>[...]
>> Totally unaware where in the world are the segments, I used the
>> "download from osm" button from JOSM and clicking at the map tab (see
>> 4.png [4]).  The segments are somewhere in northern Europe (was it Sweden
>or
>> Norway)!
>
>
>Yes, obviously this is the same problem. I'm sorry, I must have missed
>that post from Maning. I still don't understand how this happened though.
>Is this a sign of some general instability in the OSM database? If I
>search for one of the way names in the name finder, it tells me that it's
>in England...
>
>http://www.frankieandshadow.com/osm/?find=Matahimik
>
>   Håkon

As a follow up and partial closure on this issue it appears the reason for
the majority of the errors was that the original data upload in JOSM was
edited to remove negative ID values. Since negative ID values are required
to flag a new object to the db rather than an existing one during the CREATE
process (a change for API 0.4) this caused data integrity issues.
Additionally the problem flagged up an error with the API relating to
segment deletions. The bag for that is being investigated.

So, a reminder to all osm file format uploaders. When JOSM sets a negative
ID prior to data upload please don’t be tempted to change it! Its there for
a reason.

Cheers

Andy

Andy Robinson
Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk