Patent attributes
A geographic data relational database and a spatial library of routines that access and analyze spatial data are used to convert an identified location to a set of geographic coordinate pairs. A geocoder engine applies the spatial library routines to the geographic data in the relational database, and based on the identified location and a set of matching rules, produces the set of geographic coordinates. The geographic data may be derived from multiple sources. The rules may specify, for example, that only geographic coordinates corresponding to an exact match of the identified location are to be returned, or that matching of certain attributes may be relaxed. The identified location may be, for example, the intersection of two streets, an address, a postal area code such as a zip code.
