Title: DB Searches - Nearby Cotunries
I
remember helping customers with some tango based solutions which were similar to
this (most were for a give us your postal/zip code and we'll find you the
closest retail location type search). The problem is with the size of the main
region. Take geography that you'd be familiar with. Non South-western Ontario
readers can ignore the following. <@GRIN>
I'm in
south Cambridge. I am looking for a place that has locations in north Waterloo
and Burlington. Depending on how big the source region is in the application
(i.e. Cambridge is part of Waterloo region) I could get results that show me
that the location in Waterloo is in Waterloo and I am in Waterloo so we must be
in the same location, when in fact the truth is that I'm at the other end of
Waterloo region and that the location in Burlington is actually closer to me.
You
also run into the problem of 'how the crow flies' vs. actual travelling
distance. I think that Cleveland is closer to us than Detroit is but only if
you're a bird. New York and Vermont are the two closest border states with
Ontario if you live in Kingston. But if you live in Sudbury, Michigan and
Illinois are probably the two closest states.
What
about using something like MapQuest to obtain the driving distance between your
source point and other points and then including those that meet a predetermined
maximum value in your search results.
Hope
this helps,
Steve Smith
Skadt Information Solutions
Office: (519) 624-4388
GTA: (416) 606-3885
Fax: (519) 624-3353
Cell: (416) 606-3885
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: http://www.skadt.com
Any suggestions on how I can implement a database search which
returns rows for not only the requested State and/or country but also rows for
geographically surrounding and nearby states or countries?
I guess I could create a manually populated table of nearby
states or countries (lets call them regions to be more general) for each
region.
Are there any services out there which provide this kind of
info? Is there a site that can offer this raw data initially? If I
can get or pull this from somewhere, it would be preferred over doing things
manually.
Thanks much,
Henning Sittler
www.inscriber.com
