Pitney Bowes MapXtreme - Manual (Page 256)

Chapter 13: Finding Locations
Functional Overview of Find
MapXtreme v7.1 263 Developer Guide
Functional Overview of Find
Find is used when you wish to locate map features by address, street intersection or name. To find
features at locations using selection tools or queries, use the Search classes in the Data namespace
(see
Searching for Features ).
A successful Find operation can result in an exact match, one or more close matches, or no match
(failed match). The operation is controllable by a variety of properties and fallback options and are
discussed in the
Overview of the Data.Find Namespace . The section below describes how
MapXtreme makes a match. The more you understand the Find process, the more you can control
the success of the operation.
The Find Process
MapXtreme locates map features by matching an address, street intersection or place name with
information in the feature table. For example, you can find 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in
Washington, D.C. provided a table of Washington D.C. streets is open.
Finding a map feature is similar. For example, you can find The White House if you have a mappable
table of landmarks that contains the name “The White House” and its geo-referenced (mappable)
location. You don’t need to supply the address to find by place name.
To find a street intersection you must provide both street names that make up the intersection.
MapXtreme attempts to find an exact match in which the result is a character by character match to
the input address, place name or intersection. If it cannot make an exact match, MapXtreme
attempts to find close matches based on its matching rules and your settings. If it cannot find a close
match, it returns a failed match. Note that matching is not case-sensitive. Upper and lower case
characters are successfully matched with one another.
A street address is normally made up of a street number, name and abbreviations that represent the
street prefix, such as North, and suffix, such as Road. Addresses can take a variety of forms and
may include additional information such as apartment number or route. In addition, some of the key
components like street type may be missing from the input address. MapXtreme looks at each
component of the address and applies specific rules to it to find a match.
The following sections describe how MapXtreme handles specific information and conditions
including street name, street abbreviations, address numbers, refining tables and results.
Matching to Street Name
A match to a street name is a straightforward character by character evaluation of the address
against the information in the search table. For example, MapXtreme returns an exact match for the
street name LaSalle if LaSalle is in the table, but may only return a close match if the address is
spelled La Salle or LaSal.
Matching to Street Abbreviations
Street abbreviations vary widely in address records. Sometimes the component is missing
altogether. In many cases, however, MapXtreme can make an exact match even if there are slight
differences between the address and the search table. MapXtreme refers to a standardized address