2/7/2014 Geocoding With SQL Server

John Sample
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Geocoding With SQL Server
Update: Sept 10th 2005:

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March, 2010 (1) GEOCODING RSS FEED
Many of the scripts and tables on this page are outdated, please see
April, 2008 (2)
the geocoding category for the latest versions.
May, 2006 (3) There is now a beta installer.
February, 2006 (2)
January, 2006 (3) With the release of the Google Maps API, I wanted to try out some mapping. This
ended up being the fairfaxinfo.com project.
November, 2005 (5) As nice as the Google API is, it does nothing to help with the hardest part of
October, 2005 (2) mapping: getting addresses translated into longitude/latitude.
September, 2005 (12) The only free service I could find was www.geocoder.us, but I didn't want to rely
on it being up/free forever. The code is available in PERL with a Berkley DB, but I
August, 2005 (7) would much rather chew on tinfoil than try and read someone else's perl code.
July, 2005 (9) So, after much headscratching, fist pounding, key banging, debugging, eye
June, 2005 (7) wateringly boring (but thorough) census documentation, and in general driving
everyone around me crazy, I have finally managed to use the Tiger/Line census
April, 2005 (7)
data and SQL Server to geocode addresses.
March, 2005 (3)
February, 2005 (2) There's a lot of leg work to do up front to prep your db.
January, 2005 (10) I tested random results against geocoder.us and they matched. Your mileage
may vary.
December, 2004 (17)
November, 2004 (8) C OMING SOON: A program that automates the 5 gig census download, extracts
October, 2004 (3) the files and installs the db is almost finished. It should be up the week of Aug
10th.
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Expert Access Programmers
(rss) www.pcapps.com/MS-Access
Custom Business Database Solutions Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner
Geocoding
(rss) Step 1: Load The Data
First, you'll need to get the Tiger/Line files for your county. You'll need your
Kickball county's fips code which you get find here.
(rss) Download the zip file for your county, it will probably only be a couple of
megabytes.
Image Galleries We're only going to use Type 1 and Type 2 files for now. I merged a few other
types, but thats beyond the scope of this article.
Arcade Pictures Extract *.rt1 and *.rt2.
Miscellaneous
Shipwreck We're going to load these files into tables TIGER_01 and TIGER_02 respectively.
I use a database called TIGER, so modify the later commands if you name your
db something else.
Friend's Sites
The table definitions will match the file schema even though we're not going to
Blog de C onnard use all the fields.
Jeff Plant Here are the DDL files for TIGER_01 and TIGER_02.
Now we need to use the BC P utility to load the data.
Here are the format files I used: tiger1.txt tiger2.txt
News
You can find me at: The census files have occasional weird junk that will break your tables, like

[email protected] characters in the address number columns, so you'll need to set the maxerrors
and log the output if you want to fix them and reinsert the suspect records.
I suggest you make .bat files out of the bcp commands to save your fingers:

bcp_load.txt
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2/7/2014 Geocoding With SQL Server
bcp_load.txt
The switches are case sensitive, so be careful. (-F means something different
than -f).

Step 2: Create the Functions

Now that we've got the data, we're ready to create the Geocoding functions.
Most return a table containing latitude, longitude, zip, and TLID (the Tiger/Line
key). This will be expanded in the future.

Most of the functions in the scripts are support calls, you only need to worry
about four of them at the moment:
fnGeocode(
@DirPrefix varchar(2), *see the note below
@Number int, Number component of the address. ex: pass in 1234 to geocode
1234 Main St
@StreetName,
@StreetType,
@DirSuffix varchar(2), *
@ZIP, Optional. Pass in ZIP if known. Otherwise pass in -1
@StateFipsC ode, Optional. Pass in FIPS identifier for state if known. Otherwise
use -1
@StateC ountyC ode, Optional. Pass in FIPS identifier for county. Otherwise use -1
)
For the optional components, searches will only be performed if one of the
following combinations is provided:
ZIP
FipsState
FipsState AND FipsC ounty

*Take special note of the @DirPrefix parameter.

If you are geocoding the address 123 West Main St, you will need to call the
function like this:
select * from fnGeocode('W',123,'MAIN','ST','',55555,-1,-1)
The census files store directional prefixes as one or two characters: N, S, E, or
W, NW, SE, etc. Pass in an empty string if there is no prefix.
The @DirSuffix is the same concept just at the end of the address. Example: 123
Main St SW.

You will need to normalize your street types before calling the function. For
example, Street needs to be passed in as St, and Road needs to be passed in as
RD or you won't get a hit.
Select distinct from the TIGER_01.fetype column to get the possible values.

You can reverse geocode and get the closest node intersection with the next
function:
fnReverseGeocode(
@Longitude decimal(9,6),
@Latitude decimal(9,6)
)
Eventually this function will attempt to return the exact address. Right now you
will get the street(s) and address range, but I'm not trying to guess the number
quite yet.

To get the location where streets A and B intersect (which may be more than
once):
fnGeocodeIntersection(
@DirPrefixA varchar(2),
@StreetNameA varchar,
@StreetTypeA varchar,
@DirSuffxA varchar(2),
@ZipA int,
@DirPrefixB,
@StreetNameB,
@StreetTypeB,
@DirSuffxB varchar(2),
@ZipB
)

The fourth function tries to find a location when the exact number isn't known.
Addresses I had to geocode were usually given as 5600 block Main St.
Since we are searching a range of addresses the number has to at least
theoretically exist on one of the chains. But if there is no address 5600 and the
chain starts at 5601, you will not get a hit with the other functions. Use this query
as a last resort:
fnGeocodeClosestAddress(
@DirPrefix varchar(1),
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2/7/2014 Geocoding With SQL Server
@Number int,
@StreetName,
@StreetType,
@DirSuffx varchar(2),
@ZIP
)

To install, you can use the following scripts. The release notes for the latest
versions can be found here.
For the entire database (don't use for an upgrade unless you want to reload the
data): Geo.All.05.txt
If you already have the database setup, use this script to update the functions:
Geo.functions.05.txt

Now for an example of how the census data and Google Maps differ in their data.

This is an image of a complete street chain (mulitple type 1 and type 2

records) overlayed on Google Maps as a polyline:

Notice that the marker is correctly positioned on the census data from which it
was derived, but not on the Google road representation.
This one isn't that badly aligned compared to some I've seen.

In the next update I'm going to cover how to merge type 6 records into your
data which provide more address ranges for type 1 records.

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