FAQ xLocate 2

deals with geocoding and reverse geocoding
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Bernd Welter
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FAQ xLocate 2

Post by Bernd Welter »

Hi there,

in the context of xLocate 2 some questions occur periodically. I therefore started to collect them. The following list is subject to grow ;-)
  • We heard that the geocoding within xLocate 2 requires data beyond the traditional map. Does this mean we can't use xServer 2 without the geocoder data?
    It is no problem to use xServer 2 without the geocoder data (folder GCD below the basemap) as long as you deactivate the xLocate module.
  • I have GCD data. Where am I supposed to deploy it? How to activate it?
    I recommend to deploy the data in a substructure "/GCD" and versioned subfolders below. To activate the new path you have to set the following configuration key in the xserver.conf (core). My subfolder /20211015 contains a specific data package I recently received and installed:
    geocodingDataPath = """C:\ptv-xserver\GCD\20211015"""
    My personal recommendation is to create a dedicated GCD directory anyway - I usually update the index several times per year and this happens independent from the regular map updates (which I keep in another dedicated folder /maps).
  • How much disk space do we have to provide for this GCD data?
    The geocoding index is really hungry. For the 2019.2H Europe data you have to provide about 50 GB of data (in addition to the basemap). The US map 2019 index requires about 40 GB. (Update 5.3.2024: the latest HERE based WORLD Index occupies 134 GB on my disk!)
  • What about the coverage of the geocoding data?
    The current index (august 2020) covers most of the western European countries with almost 100%. In countries of Eastern Europe the data is a bit lower. In UK the data is compareably poor.
  • Does xLocate 2 support data of both major providers?
    Currently (august 2020) we can offer HERE data for Europe and the US.
  • Does xLocate 2 support to return a list of house numbers within a street? I've seen some screenshots...
    We know these screenshots. They have been created with internal tools and the purpose is to show the quality of the data. The interface of Locate 2 does not return such lists: if your input is rough we return reference points of upperlying streets instead.
  • Is there a list of parameters we can use to parametrize the geocoding?
    The design of xLocate2 is based on "reduce parameters": operations such as "limit the maximum number of hits" is therefore shifted to the client logic. Nevertheless we have some parameters which influence the output, e.g. the CountryType (choose "how" we should return the result) and the allowedCountries (used to filter the results - quite important for the performance, too)
  • How is the definition of the score in the context of xLocate2?
    The mechanism of the score is described in the TechnicalConcepts
  • Is there a minimal setup which contains nothing more but xLocate?
    The server setup is always shipped with ALL modules but you can disable everything which is not needed. If your goal is to save disk space: forget it: the server itself requires less than 1GB but the map data consumes a load ... (40GB and more)
Let me know if you have further questions that could be helpful.
Bernd Welter
Technical Partner Manager Developer Components
PTV Logistics - Germany

Bernd at... The Forum,LinkedIn, Youtube, StackOverflow
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