Data Manager User Guide
Data Manager User Guide
Version 1.0
Revision B
PREFACE
Table 1
Style Is used for...
italic Special terminology, most of which is included in the glossary and index at the
end of the book. Italic text is occasionally used for mild emphasis.
bold Strong emphasis and warnings.
fixed width Code elements such as object methods, object properties, class names, code
examples, file names, literal text elements, and URLs.
IMPORTANT
These boxes indicate important information!
Note
These boxes indicate information of potential interest, for example, reminders, related facts, or information that
only applies to some developers.
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CONTENTS
1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 What is Data Manager? .............................................................................................................. 1
1.2 Using This Documentation.......................................................................................................... 1
1.3 System Requirements................................................................................................................. 1
1.4 Typical Workflow...................................................................................................................... 2
2 Geocoding ...................................................................................................................................... 3
2.1 What is Geocoding?................................................................................................................... 3
2.2 What Happens During Geocoding? ............................................................................................... 3
2.3 Geocode Quality ....................................................................................................................... 4
4 Tables ............................................................................................................................................ 7
4.1 Creating Tables ......................................................................................................................... 7
10 Setting Preferences.......................................................................................................................... 23
11 Troubleshooting.............................................................................................................................. 25
A Reserved Words.............................................................................................................................. 27
CHAPTER
Introduction
Data Manager is a companion application of the MapQuest Site Advantage and Advantage API solutions. Consult
the Site Advantage and Advantage API Developer Guides for additional information specific to those products.
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Chapter 1 — Introduction
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CHAPTER
Geocoding
Before covering the specifics of Data Manager, it will be useful to understand the concept of geocoding and how
it applies to your location data.
When the system cannot geocode the street address, it will look next for a ZIP code or postal code match. If a ZIP
code or postal code is present and valid, the system will return the latitude and longitude coordinate for the weighted
or geographic center-point of the submitted ZIP code or postal code. If it cannot find a ZIP code or postal code,
it will look for a city match. If no city is available, it will look for a state or province match, etc. The system
will use broader and broader geographic units until it can arrive at a geocode. In rare cases where no geocode is
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Chapter 2 — Geocoding
achievable, the system will automatically assign the latitude and longitude coordinate for the weighted or geographic
center-point of the specified country.
Intersections
To map an interstate or highway, spell out the word "interstate" or "highway" completely. Abbreviations are not
accepted.
Cardinal Points
Within addresses, the cardinal points, North, South, East, and West may be abbreviated "N", "S", “E”, and “W”,
respectively. Abbreviations such as "No." and "So." are not accepted. Examples include:
• "123 N Main St"
• "456 Main St N"
City Names
Abbreviated city names are not accepted. For instance, New York should not be entered as NYC. In addition, cities
like North Hampton should not be entered as N. Hampton.
Suite Numbers
MapQuest does not recognize suite numbers and apartment numbers so if you are having trouble geocoding
a location, try omitting the suite number.
Address Ranges
When a building’s address is represented as an address range (for example, 24-58 Elm Street), you should select a
single address within that range (for example, 24 Elm Street). MapQuest does not accept address ranges.
Vanity Addresses
In most cases, MapQuest does not recognize vanity addresses (for example, #1 MapQuest Drive). Please use the
alternative street address recognized by the United States Postal Service.
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CHAPTER
Though not recommended, it is possible to set a preference to have your data automatically pushed from your staging
database to your production database. Refer to 10 Setting Preferences for details.
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CHAPTER
Tables
Note
This chapter is only applicable to MapQuest Advantage API clients. If you have licensed MapQuest Site Advantage,
you can skip this chapter and proceed to Chapter 5, “Preparing & Uploading Location Data”.
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Chapter 4 — Tables
MapQuest auto-assigns a name to each of your tables, but you are asked to provide a suffix which is appended to
your file name. This will help you to differentiate between multiple tables.
Your table will consist of fixed standard fields, as well as up to 100 additional attributes. For additional information
on Data Manager’s standard fields, refer to Table 1, “Full Batch File Format,” on page 9.
To define additional attributes, you will need to assign a field name and select a field type for each attribute. Field
names may be up to 25 characters in length. Field types include:
• String - Up to 255 alphanumeric characters
• Integer - Any whole number
• Date - YYYY-MM-DD format only
Fields must be specified in the order in which they will appear in your data file.
Active Table
By default, the first table you create in Data Manager is your active table. This means that whenever you log in to
Data Manager, your active table is the table to which you will upload data and add, edit or delete records.
The active table can be changed on the Tables index page.
Note
Changing the active table from the Tables index page changes your active table only for the duration of your Data
Manager session.
You may change your default active table so that it is the active table each time you log in to Data Manager. Refer to
10 Setting Preferences for details.
Editing Tables
While it is possible to edit a table schema, it is instead recommended that you create a new table and then delete the
original table once you are satisfied with your new table.
Please note that editing a table schema will cause existing data in your staging database to be dumped and will require
you to load new data. Once you have loaded new data, you will need to push your new table schema and newly
uploaded data to production to expose your new data to end users. See 8 Pushing Data from Staging to Production.
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CHAPTER
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Chapter 5 — Preparing and Uploading Location Data
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Chapter 5 — Preparing and Uploading Location Data
Example Records
Here is an example location file with four records. For clarity in this User Guide, the sample records below show text
that wraps to the next line and shows extra vertical space between “lines” in the file. In your location files, there must
be no “new line” characters other than between lines that represent records.‘
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Chapter 5 — Preparing and Uploading Location Data
If you license text based searching you will be able to insert additional text fields after the search fields. Below is
an example record of what the records in your file might look like if you license 5 additional text fields and do
not use the search fields:
When deleting records with an ACD file, you do not need to enter the entire address for that record. To delete a
record, the only required fields on each line are the initial column (containing the letter d) and the record ID column.
In this special circumstance, the other fields can be completely omitted from the line if desired.
In other words, the file could contain only the two following lines indicating deletion of two records by specifying
their record IDs. For this example, the record IDs are REC101 and REC102.
d,REC101
d,REC102
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Chapter 5 — Preparing and Uploading Location Data
• For non-ASCII characters, note that Data Manager uses Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) character encoding.
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To access your Data Summary, log in to Data Manager and click “Data Summary” in the left navigation. The
following graphic shows a Data Summary page for an example staging database.
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Chapter 6 — Reviewing Processed Data
With the exception of Errors, each disposition listed on the Data Summary page is also a link. To access records
that match a listed disposition, click the desired link. Refer to 9 Downloading Data for details on downloading
records containing errors.
When you click Data Summary on the navigation bar, you will be viewing the Data Summary page for your staging
database (see following graphic). To view the disposition of records in your production database, click the Production
link toward the top of the page.
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CHAPTER
Refer to 5.2 Incremental Batch Files for additional information on adding records using batch uploads.
See 5.2 Incremental Batch Files for additional information on changing existing records using batch uploads.
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Chapter 7 — Adding, Editing, and Deleting Individual Records
See 5.2 Incremental Batch Files for additional information on deleting records using batch uploads.
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CHAPTER
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CHAPTER
Downloading Data
There are four types of files you can download from Data Manager. To protect your corporate data, all four download
types use encrypted HTTPS requests. The format of fields within downloaded files is identical to the format required
to upload batch files to Data Manager. Downloaded files are comma-delimited.
To download files, click on the Download Data item in the navigation menu. The resulting page will present four
download options:
• Ambiguities
Download all staging database records with address elements that produced multiple geocoding matches. See
2.2 What Happens During Geocoding? for additional information on ambiguous geocoding results.
• Errors
Download all records that failed to import due to errors. Examples of errors would include records that were
lacking required fields or records with non-unique record ID fields.
• Staging Data
Download all records in your staging database.
• Production Data
Download all database records in your production database. These are the records made available to your
implementation of Site Advantage or Advantage API.
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CHAPTER
10
Setting Preferences
Data Manager offers several preferences to enhance your ability to manage your location data.
• Push to Production
By default, you must physically log in to Data Manager and indicate via the web interface that you want to
push data to production. It is possible to indicate via a preference setting that you would like your data to
automatically push to production each time you upload a batch file. This applies to both full batch files and
incremental batch files. This does not, however, apply to records manually added, edited or deleted via
the Data Manager interface. We recommend that you change this setting only when you have thoroughly
familiarized yourself with Data Manager and have successfully uploaded numerous files.
• Ambiguities
By default, when you push to production and multiple ambiguous geocodes exist for a location record, the first
geocode is the one pushed to production. It is possible to prevent ambiguous geocodes from being pushed to
production. When this preference setting is changed, ambiguous geocoding results are kept in the staging
database until they are manually resolved or until they are replaced by uploading a new batch file.
• E-mail Notifications
By default, Data Manager sends e-mail notifications to the e-mail address on file. This preference setting
allows you to add an additional e-mail address to be copied on Data Manager e-mail notifications.
• Active Table
For Advantage API clients, the first table you create in Data Manager is your active table upon login. Although
you can temporarily change your active table during any active session, this preference setting allows you to
specify a different table to be your active table each time you login to Data Manager.
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Troubleshooting
Below is a list of common Data Manager problems and solutions. For the latest troubleshooting information and the
latest version of this document, visit the MapQuest Technical Resource Center at https://trc.mapquest.com.
• Field Data in Wrong Fields
Carefully read the specifications in 5 Preparing and Uploading Location Data. All fields must be present in
each record even if they are blank or have no data.
• Maximum Characters Exceeded
Carefully read the specifications in 5 Preparing and Uploading Location Data. Fields have maximum lengths
that must be observed.
• Database Locked
When performing some functions (for example, uploading data, pushing data to production, downloading
data), the Data Manager system will lock you out of your staging and production databases. After processing
is complete you will receive an e-mail notification.
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APPENDIX
Reserved Words
The following is a list of reserved words used by MySQL and Data Manager. These words cannot be used in
naming fields.
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Appendix A — Reserved Words
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Appendix A — Reserved Words
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Appendix A — Reserved Words
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Appendix A — Reserved Words
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INDEX
A F R
.acd extension ........................ 12 flat file ............................... 9, 12 reviewing processed
active table .............................. 8 full batch files .......................... 9 data .................................... 15
adding individual
records ................................ 17
ambiguities ....................... 21, 23 G S
ambiguous geocoding geocode quality ................... 4, 10
results .............................. 3, 23 staging data ........................... 21
geocoding................................ 3 staging database................... 5, 15
automating file uploads ............ 13
D I T
data summary.................... 15, 19 incremental batch
tables...................................... 7
files ................................. 9, 12
troubleshooting....................... 25
E
P
e-mail notifications.................. 23
editing individual production data....................... 21
U
records ................................ 17 production database................... 5 upload file page ...................... 13
errors.................................... 21 push to production .................. 23 uploading data........................ 13