Hello James, Can I just append my company's world data offering onto your excellent sum: Europa Technologies has a series of world data sets which includes the popular Global Insight product line. The entry level product in this family is Global Insight Lite - a 1:3m scale up-to-date political map combined with a places layer of over 19,500 places. Locations are generally categorised into capitals, major cities and cities/large towns. Lite is a "soft product" which is downloaded from the web. A login/password is assigned and is valid for one year during which customers can download free updates. Single user costs are GBP245 or USD415. For heavier gazetteers, there is Global Insight and Global Insight Plus (>345,000 places). Full details at http://www.europa-tech.com I probably don't need to tell you this James but here are some general points for list members considering world gazetteers: 1) Strictly speaking, a gazetteer is simply a location look-up. It does not guarantee that, when visualised on a map, it will inter-match. e.g. Coastal places may be in the sea! 2) Many free gazetteers are not maintained but the world changes politically every year. A vendors history and commitment to maintenance is important to ensure one does not buy a dead-end product. Old Digital Chart of the World type gazetteers list Victoria instead of Harare - a change that happen a very long time ago! 3) Few gazetteers have a grading system to allow differentiation between "important" places and "less important". There is no unified population model for the world and combing straight statistics from national census agencies does not always gives an apples-to-apples comparison. 4) In addition to place name and location, a good gazetteer will also provide rich attribute information. Administrative area will help ambiguous place name searches and will importance classifications. e.g. Troy, USA will have many matches but Troy, New York, USA will only have one. Coding systems like FIPS and ISO for data processing may also be important. Needless to say, Global Insight products address all of these issues! Regards, Warren Vick Europa Technologies Ltd, U.K. http://www.europa-tech.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: MI SUM - World Cities Database
Warren Vick, Europa Technologies Ltd. Thu, 04 May 2000 10:25:48 -0700
- MI SUM - World Cities Database James Marlow
- Re: MI SUM - World Cities Datab... Warren Vick, Europa Technologies Ltd.
- Re: MI SUM - World Cities D... Alan Pritchard