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National Postcodes to be introduced
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Join Date:Posts: 19033
It may be the same database but it is used differently.
Clearly since Eircode appeared, An Post are being (in some situations) more picky as regards to addresses that historically they have being willing to accept and deliver to - even though they do not carry the 'correct' postal address. This may be a coincidence but it is being noticed.
If you think about it, since An Post have fully automated systems for sorting mail, the the design of Eircode was irrelevant to them - so why did they have undue influence on the design? The Eircode will only be read by a machine, and any code could be mapped to any location - it is only for humans that a relationship is needed. You can see this in the random element in the code - so why not the whole code being random?0 -
Sam Russell wrote: »It may be the same database but it is used differently.
Clearly since Eircode appeared, An Post are being (in some situations) more picky as regards to addresses that historically they have being willing to accept and deliver to - even though they do not carry the 'correct' postal address. This may be a coincidence but it is being noticed.
If you think about it, since An Post have fully automated systems for sorting mail, the the design of Eircode was irrelevant to them - so why did they have undue influence on the design? The Eircode will only be read by a machine, and any code could be mapped to any location - it is only for humans that a relationship is needed. You can see this in the random element in the code - so why not the whole code being random?
Yes, eircode is a postcode so it uses the postal address of the geodirectory, no surprises there. But as stated, it has both in its database as its the same database.
Well technically (excluding pre existing Dublin codes) the entire eircode is random. It's just that the random numbers / letters correspond to a postal routing office0 -
Join Date:Posts: 19033
Yes, eircode is a postcode so it uses the postal address of the geodirectory, no surprises there. But as stated, it has both in its database as its the same database.
Well technically (excluding pre existing Dublin codes) the entire eircode is random. It's just that the random numbers / letters correspond to a postal routing office
You are missing my point.
An Post had a major say in the design of Eircode despite them saying they did not need it and did not want it and would not use it. I know it is a post code, but did Irish Rail have a major say in the design of the light rail system (Luas)?
What we have is a PPS number for every address.0 -
Join Date:Posts: 5745
Where this whole "postal address" issue falls completely asunder is when someone is trying to find an address on something like a GPS.
If the postal address is 20 somestreet, ballygobackwards, Postal town, county elsewhere, but the actual address is 20 somestreet, ballygobackwards, townland, county something, there is a VERY good chance that the GPS won't be able to find it unless the user has been told to use the county something location to narrow down the choices. It may be able to find the address with the postal town, but it's not anything like as easy to do, and depending on the structure of the GPS database, it may well fail completely, unless the entire database for the whole country is used as the starting point for the search.
If, and right now it's an uncertain If, the full eircode database is incorporated into the GPS systems, then there's a much better chance of finding the right location, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one, for a long time, the Irish road database was almost non existent, because the money that Ordnance Survey wanted to provide that database was not acceptable to the providers, due to the relatively low level of take up compared to other countries. My worry is that the Eircode providers will be looking for too much, and the GPS mappers will tell them where to go with their database, which will make the end result a lot less effective than it should have been.
Then, we run into the issue that came up in discussion today in relation to geocode concepts, if I'm driving on a road that I don't know well, and find an incident of any form, it could be an accident, or a flood due to a blocked culvert, or a tree down, or an overhead cable down, then in that situation, Eircode is of zero use to me, and a geo based code (Like Loc8, but there are others ) is totally capable of providing an completely unambiguous location to the emergency services, or the county council, or the ESB, or whoever, and it seems to be a great pity that the relevant people who made the decisions didn't provide a system that was capable of dealing with both situations in the one system. Yes. it's possible to use latitude and longitude for the roadside situation, but there are a number of standards for maps and lat long information, and ensuring that the right one is being used by all concerned could be problematic. Ideally, we would have an EU standard system that would work across the entire union, so the same software would be applicable to all EU states, but that sort of viable concept seems to escape our legislators, and they spend too much of their time worrying about how straight Cucumbers are, rather than dealing with things that might be of real use to their countries.
Yes, I know, there are arguments for and against both methods of providing the end result. I've sat and watched this thread go round and round the same endless loop since Eircode was released, and seen it derail into the argument about actual location compared to post location as well, and bluntly, it's becoming boring, in that the powers that be have made a (to me flawed) decision, and like it or not, it won't change any time soon.
It really is time to move on, An Post have decided to become more aggressive about "their" routing system, and Eircode has been based on that, so we're stuck with a second best system that An Post didn't need in the first place, because they'd already developed their own system to deal with the issue a long time ago.
And just to go off topic for a moment, on the subject of Counties, if I had my way, we'd be doing away with things like county councils, and merging a lot of that state services expense into a system that is more province based, we really don't need the number of top level civil servants at county level that are there, they are a significant expense that the population size just does not justify, but changing it is not going to happen any time soon, unless the troika come back again, there's no political mileage to be gained for anyone to make those sorts of fundamental change, regardless of how appropriate it might be.Shore, if it was easy, everybody would be doin it.😁
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Now that Postcodes have finally arrived, > after many decades . . .
Love them or hate them, lets embrace them, learn to use them, memorise them, in the same way as you do with your telephone number, Visa card number, or PPS number.0 -
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Irish Steve wrote: »Where this whole "postal address" issue falls completely asunder is when someone is trying to find an address on something like a GPS.
If the postal address is 20 somestreet, ballygobackwards, Postal town, county elsewhere, but the actual address is 20 somestreet, ballygobackwards, townland, county something, there is a VERY good chance that the GPS won't be able to find it unless the user has been told to use the county something location to narrow down the choices. It may be able to find the address with the postal town, but it's not anything like as easy to do, and depending on the structure of the GPS database, it may well fail completely, unless the entire database for the whole country is used as the starting point for the search.
If, and right now it's an uncertain If, the full eircode database is incorporated into the GPS systems, then there's a much better chance of finding the right location, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one, for a long time, the Irish road database was almost non existent, because the money that Ordnance Survey wanted to provide that database was not acceptable to the providers, due to the relatively low level of take up compared to other countries. My worry is that the Eircode providers will be looking for too much, and the GPS mappers will tell them where to go with their database, which will make the end result a lot less effective than it should have been.
Then, we run into the issue that came up in discussion today in relation to geocode concepts, if I'm driving on a road that I don't know well, and find an incident of any form, it could be an accident, or a flood due to a blocked culvert, or a tree down, or an overhead cable down, then in that situation, Eircode is of zero use to me, and a geo based code (Like Loc8, but there are others ) is totally capable of providing an completely unambiguous location to the emergency services, or the county council, or the ESB, or whoever, and it seems to be a great pity that the relevant people who made the decisions didn't provide a system that was capable of dealing with both situations in the one system. Yes. it's possible to use latitude and longitude for the roadside situation, but there are a number of standards for maps and lat long information, and ensuring that the right one is being used by all concerned could be problematic. Ideally, we would have an EU standard system that would work across the entire union, so the same software would be applicable to all EU states, but that sort of viable concept seems to escape our legislators, and they spend too much of their time worrying about how straight Cucumbers are, rather than dealing with things that might be of real use to their countries.
Yes, I know, there are arguments for and against both methods of providing the end result. I've sat and watched this thread go round and round the same endless loop since Eircode was released, and seen it derail into the argument about actual location compared to post location as well, and bluntly, it's becoming boring, in that the powers that be have made a (to me flawed) decision, and like it or not, it won't change any time soon.
It really is time to move on, An Post have decided to become more aggressive about "their" routing system, and Eircode has been based on that, so we're stuck with a second best system that An Post didn't need in the first place, because they'd already developed their own system to deal with the issue a long time ago.
And just to go off topic for a moment, on the subject of Counties, if I had my way, we'd be doing away with things like county councils, and merging a lot of that state services expense into a system that is more province based, we really don't need the number of top level civil servants at county level that are there, they are a significant expense that the population size just does not justify, but changing it is not going to happen any time soon, unless the troika come back again, there's no political mileage to be gained for anyone to make those sorts of fundamental change, regardless of how appropriate it might be.
If I may, you are missing the point. A structured address system minimises the chances of not finding an address on a lookup - be it GPS or some online system.
After adding eircode, the address of Cobh Fire Brigade is (in the eircode database):
CORK COUNTY FIRE & RESCUE SERVICES
CORK COUNTY COUNCIL
COBH FIRE STATION
CATHEDRAL PLACE
COBH
CO. CORK
P24 CH52
If instead of all these elements of a dog's dinner, Capita were given the job of cleaning the national address database with a focus on minimalism one might end up with something like:
Cobh Fire Station
1 CATHEDRAL PLACE
21481 COBH
No country that uses postcodes also uses county names. The intelligent person searching for Cobh Fire Station in a database/GPS device would just use Cobh Fire Station and put Cobh in the town name. They are certainly not going to search for "CORK COUNTY FIRE & RESCUE SERVICES", or Cork County Council.
Eircode is completely screwed up in every respect. Dysfunctional Ireland. And nobody is using it - I would guess that if one took a sample of 1,000 letters at any sorting centre tonight, far less than 1% would bear the "correct" postcode.
If a single national address structure is devised, with a national grid reference for each address, An Post can easily input the new structure into the four sorting centres computer systems, using the national grid reference as the point of commonality between old and new. An Post can even leave the old addresses in their database, (maybe flag them as old, for removal some day), and add the new structured address format to their system. So if an envelope bears a standardised address or an old address - it doesn't matter. It will be routed to the same grid reference and thus postal carrier.0 -
Well technically (excluding pre existing Dublin codes) the entire eircode is random. It's just that the random numbers / letters correspond to a postal routing office
Dublin eircodes are random. In "Dublin city" (loosely defined) the old district numbers were retained, and duplicated in the stupid eircode database. But the last four characters are total random rubbish. The rest of the county has "A" codes - a letter it shares with Louth etc.
The random codes do not correspond to a "postal routing office". There is no relationship between a postcode and anything. It is random. The only way of deciphering the code is to perform a database lookup. Which database one has to buy at great cost. Even where it was given out free (eg to Google and GPS companies) they are not using it. I updated my Garmin GPS last night with 8 GB of maps and tables. The eircocde does not work on the device.0 -
Irish Steve wrote: »
Then, we run into the issue that came up in discussion today in relation to geocode concepts, if I'm driving on a road that I don't know well, and find an incident of any form, it could be an accident, or a flood due to a blocked culvert, or a tree down, or an overhead cable down, then in that situation, Eircode is of zero use to me, and a geo based code (Like Loc8, but there are others ) is totally capable of providing an completely unambiguous location to the emergency services, or the county council, or the ESB, or whoever, and it seems to be a great pity that the relevant people who made the decisions didn't provide a system that was capable of dealing with both situations in the one system. Yes. it's possible to use latitude and longitude for the roadside situation, but there are a number of standards for maps and lat long information, and ensuring that the right one is being used by all concerned could be problematic. Ideally, we would have an EU standard system that would work across the entire union, so the same software would be applicable to all EU states, but that sort of viable concept seems to escape our legislators, and they spend too much of their time worrying about how straight Cucumbers are, rather than dealing with things that might be of real use to their countries.
For the situation where you stumble upon an accident in a location you're not fimiliar with, using a postcode/geocode is simply not the solution.
If you call the emergency services in Ireland, they are now trailing (maybe it's even been fully rolled out by now) a system that lets emergency services text your phone a link, you click on it, the phone transmits your location back to the emergency services call centre.
Now you see there's no need for a loc8code type code for this scenario, it would add an unnecessary step to the equation, requiring the user to start messing around with generating codes on an app when they could be in shock or anything.
Isn't it much better to simply dial 112/999 and all you have to do is click something and they know where you are? We also have cars for sale in Ireland now that will automatically transmit their location to a call centre if they crash.
The reality is we don't need a geocode for these scenarios, it adds a layer of complexity that's not necessary.
In relation to the full database of eircodes being on the sat nav including all variations. The good thing about eircode is, it doesn't really matter, the Eircode is linked to the geo coordinates so if you just enter that you get the right location regardless of address.
EDIT: the service is called locateme112 and it appears to be fully operational now across all services, ambulance, coast guard, air corps and Gardai
http://emergency-services.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Defence-Forces-2.pdf0 -
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Dublin eircodes are random. In "Dublin city" (loosely defined) the old district numbers were retained, and duplicated in the stupid eircode database. But the last four characters are total random rubbish. The rest of the county has "A" codes - a letter it shares with Louth etc.
The random codes do not correspond to a "postal routing office". There is no relationship between a postcode and anything. It is random. The only way of deciphering the code is to perform a database lookup. Which database one has to buy at great cost. Even where it was given out free (eg to Google and GPS companies) they are not using it. I updated my Garmin GPS last night with 8 GB of maps and tables. The eircocde does not work on the device.
You are claiming it was given out free to google and GPS companies. When in the real world it was announced recently that they were only just finalising the licening agreement for use by these companies??
You've just proven yourself to be making stuff up.
That post is utter nonsense.0 -
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What's stopping you from writing:If I may, you are missing the point. A structured address system minimises the chances of not finding an address on a lookup - be it GPS or some online system.
After adding eircode, the address of Cobh Fire Brigade is (in the eircode database):
CORK COUNTY FIRE & RESCUE SERVICES
CORK COUNTY COUNCIL
COBH FIRE STATION
CATHEDRAL PLACE
COBH
CO. CORK
P24 CH52
If instead of all these elements of a dog's dinner, Capita were given the job of cleaning the national address database with a focus on minimalism one might end up with something like:
Cobh Fire Station
1 CATHEDRAL PLACE
21481 COBH
Cobh Fire Station
Cork
P24 CH520 -
TheChizler wrote: »What's stopping you from writing:
Cobh Fire Station
Cork
P24 CH52
Or just P24 CH52 - the Eircode alone will get mail to the Cobh Fire Station.0 -
The address thing is not Eircode. They've been doing that in many areas since well before Eircode. Routing my post through the "wrong" county can get post to me a day earlier than the "correct" county, because it is a routing address (describing the best route for the post to take), not an actual physical address (which hasn't changed at all), so I'd dispute your claim about it delaying post too. People here have been using "Via Waterford" (ie. the "wrong" county) for longer than I can remember.
Via Waterford is the postal address. My claim was that using the geigraphical county name may lead to delays, not use of the postal address. And it proves that the introduction of Eircodes didn't create the concept of 'postal' counties (or 'wrong' counties as you call them). They've been in use since the 19th century, and they were used in the UK up until the 1990s.
For example, Gatwick Airport is physically located in West Sussex but was deemed to be in the county of Surrey for postal purposes, just like Shannon Airport is deemed to be in Co. Limerick for postal purposes but is physically located in Co. Clare.
If the internet had been around when Gatwick Airport was assigned to the 'wrong' county I've no doubt that the fuss the media made about Shannon Airport having a postal address in the 'wrong' county would have been just as big.
The reason for some UK postal addresses being in the 'wrong' county is precisely the same reason that some Irish postal addresses are in the 'wrong' county - the post town system:Because the post towns had developed according to the efficiencies of mail delivery, there are many, many instances where a locality comes under a post town in a neighbouring county. If a town is close to the boundary, it will probably be the nearest town for parts of the next county and it would not make sense to deliver mail from within the 'correct' county when there is a sorting office so close by over the border. Therefore, the vast majority of county boundaries feature some kind of discrepancy, though of course a river forming the border does help to keep them aligned.
For instance, the Dorset/Hampshire boundary has reciprocal examples: RINGWOOD (Hampshire) is the post town for the Dorset villages of St. Ives and St. Leonards; while CHRISTCHURCH (Dorset) is the post town for Sopley and Bransgore, in Hampshire.
In these instances, the correct county on a postal address is that of the post town, not the location of the village.
There are even instances across the England/Wales and England/Scotland boundaries. Small parts of northern Cumbria come under NEWCASTLETON, Roxburghshire; while Gladestry, Powys is under KINGTON, Herefordshire; and Chirbury, Shropshire is under MONTGOMERY, Powys. The most extreme example is certainly OSWESTRY, Shropshire, whose post town area extends a good distance into mid-Wales – as far as Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant and Lake Vyrnwy.
...
There are a few post towns which have a county assigned to them even though they are not in that county:
GATWICK, Surrey – Gatwick Airport is actually in West Sussex; the post town however was created from HORLEY, Surrey;
RHYMNEY, Gwent – Rhymney was never in Gwent when the 'new' counties of Wales came into being; it was in Mid Glamorgan although it had previously been in Monmouthshire, on which Gwent was largely based. This is now academic since the RHYMNEY post town was discontinued in December 1998 and it is now under TREDEGAR;
ASHFORD, SHEPPERTON, STAINES and SUNBURY-ON-THAMES, Middx. – these had all been transferred from Middlesex to Surrey when Middlesex County Council was abolished in 1965; however, the Post Office never adopted these so Middx. remained the postal county. (The other Middlesex town to be transferred to another county outside Greater London was POTTERS BAR, and in this instance the Post Office did update the county to Herts.)
TODMORDEN, Lancs. – The town of Todmorden is actually in West Yorkshire.
TIDWORTH, Hants. – The town was two separate parishes, North Tidworth in Wiltshire and South Tidworth in Hampshire; however, the main part of the town was North Tidworth. In 1992 the county boundary was realigned and all of Tidworth is now in Wiltshire.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/Postal-address-history-and-photo-album
The only way to remove the difference between some some postal addresses and geographical locations would be to either assign those postal addresses new post towns in the same counties as they're physically located (which would be require the wholesale re-organisation of An Post's delivery system) or to remove county names from the preferred postal address altogether (the UK solution) which is unlikely to go down well with most Irish people (and wouldn't work for places like Stradbally - one in Co. Laois, one in Co. Waterford and one in Co. Kerry).
Fortunately, Eircodes mean that addresses which use the geographical name of the county rather than the postal ('wrong') county can now be delivered to with the same degree of efficiency as addresses that use the postal county. This means that people who are bothered about using via Waterford or Shannon, Co. Limerick on mail can use Co. Kilkenny plus Eircode or Shannon, Co. Clare plus Eircode and be 100% sure that An Post knows where their mail is intended to go.0 -
Mountainsandh wrote: »I'm still experimenting in that regard, since a lot of (most) services I use online do not accommodate Eircodes, so I still receive a lot of mail with the "wrong" address and no Eircode. I think I have received some mail with Eircode+wrong address, and thought it wasn't delayed, but I didn't keep the envelopes so don't remember if it's happened more than once or not.
I'm after ordering a good few bits off Ebay and have emailed the sellers to include Eircode, so I i'll be able to tell in the next week or so.
We'll have to wait and see but if it follows the UK pattern, eventually mail which includes an Eircode will end up getting delivered more quickly than mail which doesn't.Mountainsandh wrote: »It's great if Eircode already has a second list of addresses, I wonder though if they are simply alternative spellings and how accurate (ie co recorded). My townland is always spelled differently on Google maps than irl alright, but with proper county.
The Eircode Address Database (ECAD) contains as many 'alias' addresses as are known about. If there's more than one 'alias' address for a given location, it will be included in the ECAD, including variant spellings of townlands and other address elements.0 -
But they are both looking at the same database and the exact same address point with its multiple forms of the known address.
Marmurr mentioned that Eircode had access to 2 databases, you simply mentioned that Eircode was using geodirectory and chose to use the postal address.
Geodirectory is not Eircode, it has the input of OSI, and that's what makes the difference in my book. OSI records accurate geographical coordinates, while An Post rearranges addresses to suit distribution of mail, using OSI. That's why I have been calling the addresses "commercial". They have a commercial purpose rather than a geographical/historical one.
But that's toilsome and boring at this stage.
To the poster who advocated "embracing" Eircodes despite its poor design. I agree, and I tried to do so.
Unfortunately, the whole thing is such a mess that : a) very few people have taken to it at all b) hardly any of the agencies and sites that I visit accommodate Eircode, so it's really not much use as it is.
As I mentioned above, I don't even know for sure whether sticking it at the bottom of my address will actually make a bloody difference.
I'm still doing it, I'm the only one doing it to the best of my knowledge : none of my colleagues (around 40 people), no one in my community (dixit post office lady and postman), Mr Mountains did once or twice when I suggested it, now he's forgotten it ... My kids' school don't use it, my local libraries don't use it and were shocked when I registered with it, no delivery men use it. I haven't seen a postcode on an address in any ads coming in the door, or in the local papers, my workplace doesn't use it either.
It's a massive fail so far, which makes it hard to keep "embracing" it.
I am still not reassured that sticking the Eircode at the bottom of my geographical address will allow me to keep using that one, since there is little evidence of that so far.
What's in it for me 5 months in ?
No guaranty that my post gets here quicker, or that I can use my usual address, or even that my post will get here more reliably.
As an average, my post was getting here quicker pre- Eircodes than post-Eircodes, and it was close to 100% reliable pre-Eircode anyway.0 -
marmurr1916 wrote: »We'll have to wait and see but if it follows the UK pattern, eventually mail which includes an Eircode will end up getting delivered more quickly than mail which doesn't.
Thing is, my mail was always delivered very quickly. Usually next day delivery, maximum 2 days.
And "eventually" is not a very good incentive to keep rearranging my address on every site to squeeze Eircode in the address line (not the postcode line, since that never works), or to keep messaging people to please add Eircode to my address.0 -
Indeed you could! But as humans are prone to error it's always advisable to have a bit of the address as well.marmurr1916 wrote: »Or just P24 CH52 - the Eircode alone will get mail to the Cobh Fire Station.0 -
TheChizler wrote: »Indeed you could! But as humans are prone to error it's always advisable to have a bit of the address as well.
If you sent a piece of mail with just an Eircode it would probably have a sticker with the full postal address added by An Post.0 -
Probably, it wouldn't be advisable to send something with only an Eircode identifying the address, what would happen if you made a mistake?marmurr1916 wrote: »If you sent a piece of mail with just an Eircode it would probably have a sticker with the full postal address added by An Post.0 -
Mountainsandh wrote: »Thing is, my mail was always delivered very quickly. Usually next day delivery, maximum 2 days.
And "eventually" is not a very good incentive to keep rearranging my address on every site to squeeze Eircode in the address line (not the postcode line, since that never works), or to keep messaging people to please add Eircode to my address.
More and more websites are addi ng a field for Eircodes or adapting existing postcode fields to accept Eircodes.
Once retailers cop on to the usefulness of having customer Eircodes for marketing and other ourposes more and more will afopt them.
Initially people complained that ebay didn't accept Eircodes but it does now.
Give it time and most websites will accept Eircodes0 -
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Mountainsandh wrote: »Marmurr mentioned that Eircode had access to 2 databases, you simply mentioned that Eircode was using geodirectory and chose to use the postal address.On your other point I think that An Post have a rival database of historic placenames to OSI, inherited from the Royal Mail and dating back a couple of hundred years. I need to dig up some examples but I know that frequently disagree with the government and OSI on placename spelling etc. But that's entirely a different issue to them insisting on using post towns, sometimes in a different neighbouring county.
I couldn't find Marmurr's reference to 2 databases - can you locate it?
I did find a posting from moyners but that is moyners not marmurr and it is a reference to an An Post database not an Eircode database.
As Ukoda has stated many times there is only one source file for Eircode and that is GeoDirectory. In that file there are many different elements that can be used to describe and classify an address.0 -
I couldn't find Marmurr's reference to 2 databases - can you locate it?
I did find a posting from moyners but that is moyners not marmurr and it is a reference to an An Post database not an Eircode database.
As Ukoda has stated many times there is only one source file for Eircode and that is GeoDirectory. In that file there are many different elements that can be used to describe and classify an address.
1 day ago :
But 'alias addresses', such as addresses where people use their geographical county rather than a 'postal' county, or where there's An Post preferred address (referred to as the USP [Universal Service Provider] Postal Address on the Eircode website - see below) and various other 'alias' addresses, are included in the Eircode address database:
Quote:
With Eircode you will be able to access address data for all address points in Ireland.
Eircode offers two data products for purchase;
Eircode Address File (ECAF) is the base reference data containing all 2.2 million address points with their Eircode and USP Postal Address
Eircode Address Database (ECAD) contains additional data for each address such as , alias address information, geo-coordinates and other data including but not limited to boundary data and building information. The purchase of the ECAF is a prerequisite for purchase of the ECAD (please refer to our Pricing and Licensing Information for more details)
Sorry using a Kindle right now and I can't quote or see the post number, the above is in Marmurr's post. It's a long post.
Now that I look at it, I realize that the second database would have to be purchased in addition to the postal one, which is not great news since I doubt a lot of agencies/companies would purchase the second, more geographical one, simply because the customer prefers to use it. Courriers etc would have a use for it, but I doubt Motor Tax office and such would be too bothered...0 -
Thanks. The ECAF and ECAD are two extractions from the SAME database. The ECAF has a small number of data items whereas ECAD has coordinates, alias addresses, etc. the full shebang so to speak!0
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Mountainsandh wrote: »1 day ago :
But 'alias addresses', such as addresses where people use their geographical county rather than a 'postal' county, or where there's An Post preferred address (referred to as the USP [Universal Service Provider] Postal Address on the Eircode website - see below) and various other 'alias' addresses, are included in the Eircode address database:
Quote:
With Eircode you will be able to access address data for all address points in Ireland.
Eircode offers two data products for purchase;
Eircode Address File (ECAF) is the base reference data containing all 2.2 million address points with their Eircode and USP Postal Address
Eircode Address Database (ECAD) contains additional data for each address such as , alias address information, geo-coordinates and other data including but not limited to boundary data and building information. The purchase of the ECAF is a prerequisite for purchase of the ECAD (please refer to our Pricing and Licensing Information for more details)
Sorry using a Kindle right now and I can't quote or see the post number, the above is in Marmurr's post. It's a long post.
Now that I look at it, I realize that the second database would have to be purchased in addition to the postal one, which is not great news since I doubt a lot of agencies/companies would purchase the second, more geographical one, simply because the customer prefers to use it. Courriers etc would have a use for it, but I doubt Motor Tax office and such would be too bothered...Thanks. The ECAF and ECAD are two extractions from the SAME database. The ECAF has a small number of data items whereas ECAD has coordinates, alias addresses, etc. the full shebang so to speak!
ECAD is not a second database. It's the fuller database. ECAF is a stripped down version of the same database.0 -
Mountainsandh wrote: »And costs more, so unfortunately is likely to be overlooked.
That depends on the business and whether they think it makes more business sense to buy the fuller version of the database or the stripped down version.
You pays your money and you makes your choice...0 -
TheChizler wrote: »Probably, it wouldn't be advisable to send something with only an Eircode identifying the address, what would happen if you made a mistake?
It wouldn't be delivered? People have sent mail with only Eircodes on them - a few examples have been posted on the thread.
And what would happen if you made a mistake prior to Eircodes and sent a sex toy to Mrs Murphy, Main Street, Stradbally, Co. Laois instead of Mrs Murphy, Main Street, Stradbally, Co. Waterford?
Or, a real world example, what happened before Eircodes when you sent a letter to 2 Watergate Street, Bandon, Co. Cork? Believe it or not, there are two 2 Watergate Street, Bandon, Co. Cork addresses, on the same street in the same town, but on opposite sides of the street. I've no idea how the hell this happened, but it happened and led to lots of confusion and delays.0 -
I have been watching this board for many years and have not felt able to comment, the reason for this was I was party to the bidding process, the group I was bidding with pulled out because we felt that the code structure mandated by DCENR was sub-optimal and hard to justify. In particular I felt that it was a missed opportunity to create the worlds best geo-coding system.
So how would I know? In the 1980's I ran the UK postcode system and I know what was done wrong in that design and implementation, since that time I have worked with standards bodies allover the world to help people to create and use addresses.
So what would a good Postcode System look like in Eire?
The first two Characters would match the car county code.
Then two numbers would match each significant Townland
(some Townlands are too small to be included and I know there would be rows and endless discussion, but the current code ignores Irish Geography and History so this would be better despite any inadequacy)
This would be followed by a second part, mixed alpha numeric that identified one side of a single road between junctions (Americans would call this a block face), a code would exist for every block face even if no properties existed on it.
A third part not general used would be a two character alpha numeric that identified a property on a block face. This would satisfy DNCER's requirement of identifying properties.
This code would be universal allowing a satnav to find every street segment in Eire, would allow geo-demographic analysis like the UK and Canadian codes. (As an aside the politicians who suggested that this kind of code generates a "postcode lottery" are confusing cause with effect, it allows government and citizen to see where there is existing inequality)
We tested this code against the whole road network in Eire and found that it was capable of recording all existing block faces and in the worst case allowed for 100% expansion , given that these would be new roads not properties it is difficult to envisage the circumstance in the next 50 years that would cause re-coding to be needed.
Finally it seems to me to be completely bizarre that this data and associated addresses are being sold at such a high price, the UK model. When the national benefit from free availability would be much greater, but then politicians the world over like to screw the last penny out of citizens.0 -
geographer52 wrote: »I have been watching this board for many years and have not felt able to comment, the reason for this was I was party to the bidding process, the group I was bidding with pulled out because we felt that the code structure mandated by DCENR was sub-optimal and hard to justify. In particular I felt that it was a missed opportunity to create the worlds best geo-coding system.
Your preference as indicated is a hierarchical code - it is not making any use of GIS information and modern technology. Why didn't your group go with the LOC8 or TiCode approach? What would be World's best in your format?
The cost of ECAD is quite low for 1-2 users in an organisation buying from a value added reseller - a few hundred euro.0 -
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geographer52 wrote: »
The first two Characters would match the car county code.
What was your plan to deal with the Irish form of the county names since both Irish and English are allowed to be used on number plates .0
This discussion has been closed.
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