Find a Web Service?

[Scott Schluer]

Hello,

I'm relatively new to web services. I'm looking for a web service that will
allow me to drill down on geographic locations. For example, I might click
on a text link on my site for "California". It would then display all of the
counties/well-known areas in California. Then you click on "Los Angeles
County" and it displays cities in that county. I'd also like to be able to
find "nearby" cities. If someone selects Los Angeles, I want to give them an
option to search the outlying cities also.

Any suggestions on how or where to find something like this? I tried looking
at UDDI.org, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing there! "Hand-holding"
would be appreciated on this one, lol.

Thanks,

Scott

 

[Dino Chiesa [Microsoft]]

you want census data, it sounds like.

The MapPoint.NET webservice from Microsoft does what you want. It is a
for-fee web service. You pay, then you're authorized to contact the
service. It drills into more than just cities and towns, I think you can
also drill into businesses or points of interest, as well. see
www.mappoint.net .

Also,
The US Census has databases available for (free) download that has the
geographical location stuff.
See
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/gazetteer/gazette.html

They do not have a webservice that does exactly what you want, as far as I
know. Also I don't know of another source that offers such a service based
strictly on Gazetteer data.

With the Gazetteer data files, you could build a webservice that does this.
You'd have to import the data into a database, like MS-Access, MSDE, SQL
Server, or something else. Then your webservice could just do queries on
that database.


Also, I'll bet ESRI has something in this area.


-Dino

ps: UDDI isn't really designed for this sort of "browsing" or querying.

 

[Scott Schluer]

Hey thanks! The Gazetteer data files are just what I was looking for. I have
a zip code database already which lists cities, states, counties with FIPS
code, etc. Using this along with the Gazeeteer data will allow me to pretty
much do what I need to do. This is just a small start-up operation for now
so MapPoint.NET is probably too expensive. I didn't check the pricing, but
it's M$, so it's probably out of my range. I can get along just fine with
this until I start turning a profit!

Thanks,

Scott