GeoNames Forum

Hi

While I totally appreciate the goodwill and mission of geonames I am concerned about dependency on it.

I've been working on an application for 12 months and parked it a few months ago due to other contraints and now when I return to it I noticed the geonames WS that my app depended on returns information that is not expected. e.g.
http://ws.geonames.org/postalCodeSearch?postalcode=ba14&country=GB

Now returns 1299 rows and theres no such town as "Trowbrige Central ED".
Previously the WS returned maybe 10 rows because BA14 represents around 10 local towns and villages. Its the same for all UK postcodes I tried.

So basically the behaviour has changed, broken my app and I can't lean on a service (paid for or free) which suddenly publishes information differently.

If I were to go commercial with geonames (as I would expect to if my hindered app leaves a development stage) could I expect a different level of change control?

Thanks in advance.

Kevin

Kevin

There is a parameter to control the result and the commercial service have not yet been changed. The parameter 'isReduced' has a default value of 'false' on the free services and a default value of 'true' on the commercial services. The default value on the commercial services will be changed at a later point in time after more testing and further improvements.

Best

Marc

Hello Marc

Months later and back on this... sorry if I've got rusty and have missed the point but ..

To give you an example... the code below is derived from
http://ws.geonames.org/postalCodeSearch?postalcode=ba14&countryBias=GB&isReduced=true

The thing is "Melksham Without South ED" isn't something anyone in the area will know. "Melksham" - YES.

I will willingly pay for the basic service just to get this thing up and running if you can tell me there is definitely a way to get back, e.g. "Melksham", "Trowbridge","Staverton","Holt" type results without the Grove and the ED and Central etc.

Code:

 <code> 
 <postalcode>BA14</postalcode> 
 <name>Melksham Without South ED</name> 
 <countryCode>GB</countryCode> 
 <lat>51.35005</lat> 
 <lng>-2.14025</lng> 
 <adminCode1>ENG</adminCode1> 
 <adminName1>England</adminName1> 
 <adminCode2>00</adminCode2> 
 <adminName2/> 
 <adminCode3>HY</adminCode3> 
 <adminName3>Wiltshire</adminName3> 
 </code>

I will pay up tomorrow if this functionality exists. I hope I don't sound like I'm grumbling too much :o)
Many thanks
Kevin

Kevin

You don't need the commercial service for this the parameter isReduced is sufficient. It was only wrongly configured. Now I hope it returns what you expect.

Best

Marc

Marc
Not sure if I am going mad but I am fairly certain I changed all my code (again) then we're back to where we were.

http://ws.geonames.org/postalCodeSearch?postalcode=ba14&countryBias=GB&isReduced=true

Maybe I am getting confused but it seems the fix was overwritten. If definitely worked for a short time....

Thanks
Kevin

You are right Kevin. Somehow the version you don't like has again been imported on this server. I have restored the other version and included a check for this case in the monitoring service, so even if the wrong dataset should again creep into the db the monitoring service will detect it and throw an error message.

Best

Marc