FAQ

1. What is address standardization?

   Address standardization is the process of converting an address into a standardize format. This is an essential part of maintaining a high quality address database.

   After an address is geocoded, the resulting address has an interesting effect. That is, the input address is converted into a consistent and standardize format.

2. Where do I find more documentations and references?

   The Javadoc is a great source of documentations.

   The project relies heavily on google's geocode service, you should read their documentations at http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/ and http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kml_tags_21.html

3. How does this API work?

   You can think of this API as a client library to access a geocoding service. It contains mainly 3 components:

   • a http request module that sends requests to google's geocoding web service.
   • a set of address data models that enables user easily manipulate the input and output data.
   • a kml parser that understands the geocoding service output and parse the output into the above data models.

     When an address is sent to the address standardizer, the address standardizer sends the address to google (http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/#Geocoding_HTTP_Request) and waits for the response.

     The web service responses to the request by returning a XML document (or a csv document). After receiving the responses, the address standardizer calls into the data converting modules to parse the service responses into different data objects.

     If case you are interested, this API uses JAXB to map the xml to objects.

     Any questions? Drop me a note at "zl25-drexel --> gmail.com"