Pitney Bowes MapInfo Professional - Manual (Page 375)

What Do I Need to Know Before Geocoding?
It is important to know your data and what you want to use it for before you select a method of geocoding.
Ask yourself these questions:
What kind of geographic information do I have in my database?
Do you have street addresses, towns, cities, postal codes, states, countries? Do you have potentially
ambiguous information? For example, if you have a database of customer street addresses, will you
have 125 Main Street in Smithtown and a 125 Main Street in Nassau? If so, you may have to refine your
search using town boundaries or postal codes.
What kind of maps do I have to work with?
You will need computerized maps that are at the level of detail that match your data. For example, if you
want to geocode a database of customers in specific counties by street address, you will need maps of
the desired counties that go to street level. A map of the United States that only goes to a county level
would not work for you. You can purchase the appropriate maps for your geocoding application from
MapInfo Professional or your reseller.
How geographically accurate does the placement of my data have to be?
Taking into account the first two questions, you must decide how accurate the geocoding must be. If
you are trying to pinpoint the locations of cable wires, crime scenes, or fire hydrants, a high degree of
accuracy is needed. In this case, you should geocode your data to street level.
If, however, you are going to use your data to thematically shade postal code boundaries, town boundaries,
county boundaries, state boundaries, or country boundaries, you may not need a high degree of accuracy.
In this case, geocoding against boundary files such as USZIPBDY.TAB, which we provide, would be
sufficient for your needs. Since this file does not include point postal codes (postal codes assigned to a
single building or company), the hit rate may not be as good as when you geocode by street.
Understanding the Geocoding Process
To assign X and Y coordinates to the records in your table, choose Geocode from the Table menu.
MapInfo Professional displays the Geocode dialog box, where you enter the following information:
• The name of your table for which you want to assign X and Y coordinates.
• The column in your table that contains the geographic information that will be used for matching.
• The name of the search table containing the geographic information that will be used for matching.
• The search table column containing the geographic information for matching:
375 MapInfo Professional User Guide
Chapter 14: Putting Your Data on the Map