Gustav Brock
Gustav at cactus.dk
Wed Dec 27 02:50:18 CST 2006
Hi John et al And Arthur, didn't you work with look up of regions, cities, and streets? > I look for the day that all tabular data is available this way. Maybe this site can prove useful: http://www.geonames.org <quote> The geonames.org geographical database is available for download free of charge under a creative commons attribution license. It contains over eight million geographical names and consists of 6.3 million unique features whereof 2.2 million populated places and 1.8 million alternate names. All features are categorized into one out of nine feature classes and further subcategorized into one out of 645 feature codes. (more statistics ...). The data is accessible free of charge through a number of webservices and a daily database export. Geonames.org is already serving up to over 3 million web service requests per day. </quote> The page on how to retrieve data: http://www.geonames.org/export/ I have no idea of the fidelity of the information except that I searched for some places I know. Most were right, but the tiny Rosenborg Castle (Rosenborg Slot) and the Citadel Fort (Kastellet) were both off by some hundred meters. However, you can create an account and do your own corrections which I did. Now the positions are correct. So don't rely too much on attractions and the like. More hard facts like postal codes seem to be correct. /gustav >>> jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com 19-12-2006 13:47 >>> I was particularly intrigued by the fact that the XML object could just load the xml file right off the internet without having to go through explorer. Things are getting better. I look for the day that all tabular data is available this way.