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Antarctica - both a continent and a country with the same geonames ID  XML
Forum Index -> Discussion of GeoNames Toponyms
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bitherder



Joined: 01/10/2008 16:38:54
Messages: 4
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I'm having some confusion and some difficulty related to Antarctica being both a continent and a country both with the same geonames ID (6255152).

I've imported the Geonames data dump into a local SQL database and I'm trying to create a single Geoname ID table that covers continents, countries, admin regions, and locations. When I do this, I end up with an error, because there are two entities with the same ID (even though otherwise their data is in different tables).

If I look at the info for the country of Antarctica, it has an ISO country code of 'AQ' and an ISO continent code 'AN'. The geonames info I find for the continent of Antarctica (both in the readme.txt and doing a webservice query to 'http://ws.geonames.org/searchJSON?q=cont&featureCode=CONT') has the continent code of 'AN' and the same geonames ID as the country with the ISO code of 'AQ'.

Wouldn't it make sense to have two separate IDs? One for the continent 'AN' and one for the country 'AQ'?
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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You are right this is confusing. In particular as other small islands are part of the continent with other country codes.

I have created a new entry which we will use as the geonameid for the "country":
http://www.geonames.org/6697173/antarctica.html

Marc

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bitherder



Joined: 01/10/2008 16:38:54
Messages: 4
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I now see the A.TERR entry, 6697173, in the locations dump file (AQ.zip), but I'm still seeing the 6255152 entry in the countryInfo.txt file. Has this been deprecated in some way?

When I look in geotree, I see it reflects the A.TERR entry being directly under the continent of Antarctica w/o showing any Antarctica specific country or admin region. How/why does geotree ignore the "country" of Antarctica (6255152) and the admin region AQ.00 (6620376)?

Also, if the country is in some way deprecated, the A.TERR reference to "AQ" is problematic, isn't it?
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
Offline

check the dump tomorrow for the new countryid. Geotree will take longer to take up the new countryid.

Marc

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