I'm so confused. I'm finally getting around to needing to do a 'store locator' thing.
I procured myself some zip/lat/long databases from various places. Then I noticed that for the same zip code, I got different values in different databases??!!! So for a sanity check, I decided to look "online" and punch in some to see what the "real" lat/long should be. Well, different sites give different values, and not only are they "slightly" off, but sometimes they're _positive_ or _negative_!? UGH! http://www.zipinfo.com/cgi-local/zipsrch.exe?ll=ll&zip=98119&Go=Go Seattle WA 98119 47.6388 122.3700 http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer?city=&state=&zip=98119 Location: 47.637917 N, 122.364272 W http://www.csgnetwork.com/cgi-bin/zipcodes.cgi?Zipcode=98119 http://www.myzipdb.com/mzdb_demo.php http://www.nearby.org.uk/coord.cgi?p=98119 City Seattle State Abbreviation WA State Washington Latitude 47.638770 Longitude -122.366941 So I try the east coast: http://www.zipinfo.com/cgi-local/zipsrch.exe?ll=ll&zip=14526&Go=Go Penfield NY 14526 43.1532 77.4485 http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer?city=&state=&zip=14526 Location: 43.139638 N, 77.456043 W http://www.csgnetwork.com/cgi-bin/zipcodes.cgi?Zipcode=14526 http://www.nearby.org.uk/coord.cgi?p=14526&f=full City Penfield State Abbreviation NY State New York Latitude 43.145342 Longitude -77.458499 Please help me to understand WTF is going on? Which lat/long do I need? How does the negatives effect the magic formulas to calculate distances? (I'm no trig wiz). I assume that the more precise the numbers, the better the results will be. To what decimal point should I be concerned with? --------------------- Use the value in degrees and decimals of degrees, not minutes, seconds, etc... For the Western longitude, use the negative value. For instance the longitude and latitude of my zip code is -111.64338 and 33.436767. There is already a PHP Class to do that job, never tested it, but I programmed this already for SQL Server, I am sure that doing it for MySQL would not be that complicated. It does not matter if you are not 100% accurate, you are usually off by one mile or two, but it gives an idea. -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
