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Sales > Addresses > About Geocode Fields in the Address Record Type

About Geocode Fields in the Address Record Type

Oracle CRM On Demand provides the following geocode fields for the Address record type. These fields are not available by default.

• Latitude
• Longitude

Your company administrator must add these fields to the Address page layout if you require these fields. For information on adding fields to page layouts, see Customizing Static Page Layouts.

Geocode fields are generally used to locate geographical coordinates commonly known as latitude and longitude from address values, such as the street address and the postal or ZIP code. These geocode fields are used to support mapping and location-based functionality in Oracle CRM On Demand client applications, such as Oracle CRM On Demand Disconnected Mobile Sales, or to pinpoint a location on a mapping application, such as Google Maps. If users do not populate these fields, then they are limited to using the standard-mapping functionality in the client applications using the available address values.

Latitude and longitude are typically represented using a degree, minute and second notation, for example 59º20'30"N. However, in Oracle CRM On Demand, they are represented and stored as decimal data with plus or minus signs, as follows:

• For latitude, you can enter any values in the range -90.0000000 to +90.0000000, with a maximum of 7 digits after the decimal point. If the number of digits after the decimal point exceeds 7, then Oracle CRM On Demand rounds off the value. For example, Oracle CRM On Demand rounds up a latitude value of 89.12345678 to 89.1234568.
• For longitude, you can enter any values in the range -180.0000000 to +180.0000000, with a maximum of 7 digits after the decimal point. If the number of digits after the decimal point exceeds 7, then Oracle CRM On Demand rounds off the values. For example, Oracle CRM On Demand rounds down a longitude value of 179.12345674 to 179.1234567.

In addition, Oracle CRM On Demand supports generic decimal format for latitude and longitude, that is, Oracle CRM On Demand supports numerals with a period (.) as the decimal separator. Some locales use a comma (,) as the decimal separator, however you must enter the decimal data using a period (.) as the decimal separator for these locales. Oracle CRM On Demand displays the decimal number as it is stored in its database and does not perform any local formatting of this decimal data.

To add latitude and longitude values into Oracle CRM On Demand, you must convert the degree-minute-second representation of latitude and longitude to decimal representation as follows:

Decimal Degrees = Degrees + Minutes/60 + Seconds/3600

The latitude or longitude value must have a plus or minus sign because negative values are allowed. A positive latitude value is north (N) of the equator, while a negative latitude value is south (S) of the equator. A positive longitude value is east (E) of the Prime Meridian, while a negative longitude value is west (W) of the Prime Meridian. For example, the following table shows example values for the Latitude and Longitude fields in Oracle CRM On Demand for several cities.

NOTE: Oracle CRM On Demand does not perform the conversion of latitude and longitude to the required representation in Oracle CRM On Demand. The Latitude and Longitude fields only store the geocodes associated with an address. Typically, Oracle CRM On Demand client applications, such as Oracle CRM On Demand Disconnected Mobile Sales, perform further processing and conversion of the geocode data. However, Oracle CRM On Demand can use the information in an address record to automatically find the corresponding latitude and longitude values for the address using Oracle Spatial and populate the Latitude and Longitude fields. For more information, see About the Geocoding of Address Information.