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About the Geocoding of Address Information

If Enable Geocoder is selected in the Company Profile page, Oracle CRM On Demand uses the information in an address record to find the corresponding latitude and longitude values for the address using Oracle Spatial and if successful, then populates the latitude and longitude fields in the address records with these values. This process of finding and populating the latitude and longitude from the address information is known as geocoding. Oracle CRM On Demand uses Oracle Spatial to asynchronously find the corresponding geocodes. Oracle CRM On Demand bypasses the geocoding of any records containing preexisting values in the latitude or longitude fields.

Oracle CRM On Demand regeocodes the latitude and longitude fields when:

• You clear the latitude and longitude fields
• You edit the address fields

About the Geocoding Fields in Address Records

Address records contain three fields related to geocoding:

• Geocode Status. The status of the geocoding process for the address record:
  • Null value. Address is not geocoded.
  • Success. Address successfully geocoded.
  • Failed. Address failed geocoding.

    A geocoding failure typically occurs due to incorrect address data, the unavailability of a geocode for the address, or if the address match is too generic.

• Geocode Match Code. How accurately the latitude and longitude matches with the given address as indicated by an integer value:

  Geocode Match Code	Description
  0	No geocoding match for the address.
  1	Exact geocoding match for the address.
  2	Geocoding match, with a compromise on match accuracy for the street type, or with the suffix or prefix portion of the street address.
  3	Geocoding match, with a compromise on match accuracy for the house number portion of the street address.
  4	Geocoding match, with a compromise on match accuracy for the street address.
  10	Geocoding match, with a compromise on match accuracy for the ZIP or postal code.
  11	Geocoding match, with a compromise on match accuracy for the city name.
  12	Geocoding match, with a compromise on match accuracy for the ZIP or postal code and city.

  Oracle CRM On Demand Customer Care configures an acceptable level for Geocode Match Code for your company. Oracle CRM On Demand saves the latitude and longitude fields returned from the geocoding process in an address record only when the match code is less than or equal to the level set by Oracle CRM On Demand Customer Care. This value is typically set to 3 by default.

  If Oracle CRM On Demand does not find any matches in the geocoding process, it sets Geocode Match Code to 0 and does not populate the latitude and longitude in an address.

• Geocode Match Vector. A string of 17 characters that provides a detailed summary of which parts of an address contributed to the accuracy or inaccuracy of the latitude and longitude returned for the input address. A question mark indicates an unused field position. Oracle CRM On Demand sets the Geocode Match Vector field for any addresses that are not geocoded to a series of question marks: ?????????????????. Each position contains a value ranging from 0 to 4.

  The following table lists the positions within the string, and the address attribute corresponding to each position. The address attributes are not address fields in Oracle CRM On Demand but a conceptual representation of various address parts that constitute an address, like a house number or street prefix, and so on.

  Position Within Geocode Match Vector	Address Attribute
  0 to 4	Not used
  5	Street Address - House Number
  6	Street Address - Street Prefix
  7	Street Address - Street Base Name
  8	Street Address - Street Suffix
  9	Street Address - Street Type
  10	Not used
  11	City
  12 to 13	Not used
  14	State
  15	Country
  16	ZIP or Postal Code
  17	Not used
  NOTE: Oracle Spatial derives the Street Address attributes such as House Number or Street Prefix and so on by parsing the street address information contained in the Address1, Address2, and Address3 fields in an Oracle CRM On Demand address record. How Oracle Spatial derives these attributes varies by country.

  
  The numeric value to which Oracle CRM On Demand sets the position in the Geocode Match Vector string can vary from 0 to 4 as follows:

  Geocode Match Vector Positional Value	Description
  0 or 1	Oracle CRM On Demand has found an exact match for the address attribute during geocoding.
  2 or 3	The address attribute is not null, however, Oracle CRM On Demand has not found a match for the attribute during geocoding.
  4	The address attribute is null, but Oracle Spatial managed to find a close match, based on approximation.

For more information on these geocoding fields and other address fields, see Address Fields.

Geocoding Example

The following example shows how you can use and interpret the geocoding fields, when Oracle CRM On Demand geocodes an address. Consider an address with the following field values:

When Oracle CRM On Demand geocodes this address, Oracle Spatial decomposes the address and sets the address attribute values as follows:

Oracle Spatial attempts to find a match based on these address attributes, by searching independently on individual attributes, and then using a combination of address attributes to find the best approximation for the latitude and longitude.

After successfully geocoding, Oracle CRM On Demand sets the fields as follows:

You can interpret the vector value of ??030402010??000? as shown in the following table:

Related Topics

See the following topics for related information about addresses:

• Addresses
• Working with the Address Homepage
• Managing Addresses
• Address Fields
• About Geocode Fields in the Address Record Type