[OSM-talk] Live Data - all new Data in OSM

Jonathan Bennett openstreetmap at jonno.cix.co.uk
Wed May 13 15:15:05 BST 2009


Ian Dees wrote:
>>     I don't think anybody has ever given a use case which requires such
>>    a stream and can't work with the diffs.
> 
> 
> I agree, but the point is that minutely-diffs are a minute old. At some
> point in the future someone will want to see the data in real time as a
> stream. The only reason I can currently think of is because they don't
> want to have to deal with downloading the minutely diffs and would
> rather read a stream of XML messages, applying each one to their
> database somehow as they came in.

The updates to the database aren't records of real-time, real-world
events; They're just mappers updating parts of the map. Anything which
analyses that, rather than the data itself as a whole is just
navel-gazing. It tells you something about the project, but not the
world it's mapping.

You're not missing out on anything by having minute-old data. We're not
recording how the world is changing, we're just making our map more
accurate.

As for wanting updates in a different format: Patches Welcome.




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