[OSM-talk] Zero tolerance on imports

Jean-Marc Liotier jm at liotier.org
Tue Feb 22 09:44:10 GMT 2011


Peter Budny wrote:
> suppose I somehow get a database of every McDonald's location in the
> world, complete with addresses, phone numbers, etc.

This one is of particular interest to me - I am working on a project 
outside OpenStreetMap in which we are struggling with such an issue : we 
are merging two databases with a few thousand objects representing 
various types of nodes in a fiber optics network... On the one side we 
have cable extremities and on the other we have splice boxes. We are 
supposed to connect the cables to the boxes - which would be easy if the 
extremities were positioned exactly on the boxes... They aren't. So we 
have a problem similar to the management of a POI import over existing 
points... We have found no magic way to do it : for each cable extremity 
we query the nearest splice box. If they are less than a few meters 
away, we connect them automatically - otherwise we have to review them 
manually. So not only are we taking a risk of error in high-density 
neighborhoods were some splice boxes are packed together, but there is 
still significant tedious manual work involved. For now, a POI import in 
OpenStreetMap is just like that and I fail to imagine a more efficient 
way... Though I would love someone to point out my lack of imagination !




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