Ken in Regina
02-16-2005, 04:18 PM
In another thread about Hospitals there is the question of some map products with hospitals showing up in some cities and not in others.
It was pointed out that this is an error with the map product which Garmin acquires from a company called Navteq.
What is interesting is that I have Mapguide Canada v4 and City Select North America v6. Both Garmin products. Both, as far as I can ascertain, supplied to Garmin by Navteq.
The hospitals in my city show up in Mapguide Canada v4.
They do not show up in CS North America v6.
CS North America v6 is the most recently released product, which might suggest it has the most current data of the two. But it doesn't show the hospitals.
Sorry for the preamble. I'm getting to the question.
I know a little bit about mapping. Provided tech support for the mapping efforts in our little Canadian telco for a few years and managed the contracts and technical interfaces with our basemap supplier. So I know that the various things referred to as "points of interest" (POI) are not your basic map objects, like roads and rivers and mountains are. So they will not be on any map data that Navteq acquires from their basic sources of detail map information.
They are simply items in a database - a database that will not typically come from the usual map data suppliers - with links to locations (coordinates) on the map.
So you can search in the database and if you get a hit, a location is returned. And if the links are bidirectional, you can point at something that is displayed on the map and there will be an implicit database lookup using the coordinates to return the name of the object you are pointing at, like "Joe's Bar".
So here's my question ... finally ...
Does anyone know how the POI database information is acquired? for the Garmin map products? Is the data also supplied by Navteq? Or by someone else? Or acquire directly by Garmin somehow?
It's is clearly not comprehensive. That is, it does not contain every service station, bar&grill or ladies shoe store (and, obviously, hospital) that actually exists in a particular area.
To really confuse me, what should be an earlier version of the data contains the hospitals in my city and what should be a more recent version of the data does not. (I can assure you the hospitals are still there because we just brought my daughter home today after a 5 week stay in one of them).
In the other thread, in whatever map product he is using, the original poster does not see any hospitals in his (North American) city but sees hospitals in other cities.
Are the entries in the database collected by some sort of solicitation? Perhaps for a "subscription" fee or something? Much like you would pay to be included in the Yellow Pages or Fodor's or an AAA travel guide?
I am certain that they are not available from many, if not most, of the sources that Navteq will acquire their detail map data from. I know because I dealt for eight years with the one they get their data from for the province I live in (for reference, an area roughly the same size as Texas, or about 1/3 larger than Sweden) and such data was never acquired by them. It simply was not in their mandate to do so.
So I'm curious how the POIs get into the POI database in the first place. ??
It was pointed out that this is an error with the map product which Garmin acquires from a company called Navteq.
What is interesting is that I have Mapguide Canada v4 and City Select North America v6. Both Garmin products. Both, as far as I can ascertain, supplied to Garmin by Navteq.
The hospitals in my city show up in Mapguide Canada v4.
They do not show up in CS North America v6.
CS North America v6 is the most recently released product, which might suggest it has the most current data of the two. But it doesn't show the hospitals.
Sorry for the preamble. I'm getting to the question.
I know a little bit about mapping. Provided tech support for the mapping efforts in our little Canadian telco for a few years and managed the contracts and technical interfaces with our basemap supplier. So I know that the various things referred to as "points of interest" (POI) are not your basic map objects, like roads and rivers and mountains are. So they will not be on any map data that Navteq acquires from their basic sources of detail map information.
They are simply items in a database - a database that will not typically come from the usual map data suppliers - with links to locations (coordinates) on the map.
So you can search in the database and if you get a hit, a location is returned. And if the links are bidirectional, you can point at something that is displayed on the map and there will be an implicit database lookup using the coordinates to return the name of the object you are pointing at, like "Joe's Bar".
So here's my question ... finally ...
Does anyone know how the POI database information is acquired? for the Garmin map products? Is the data also supplied by Navteq? Or by someone else? Or acquire directly by Garmin somehow?
It's is clearly not comprehensive. That is, it does not contain every service station, bar&grill or ladies shoe store (and, obviously, hospital) that actually exists in a particular area.
To really confuse me, what should be an earlier version of the data contains the hospitals in my city and what should be a more recent version of the data does not. (I can assure you the hospitals are still there because we just brought my daughter home today after a 5 week stay in one of them).
In the other thread, in whatever map product he is using, the original poster does not see any hospitals in his (North American) city but sees hospitals in other cities.
Are the entries in the database collected by some sort of solicitation? Perhaps for a "subscription" fee or something? Much like you would pay to be included in the Yellow Pages or Fodor's or an AAA travel guide?
I am certain that they are not available from many, if not most, of the sources that Navteq will acquire their detail map data from. I know because I dealt for eight years with the one they get their data from for the province I live in (for reference, an area roughly the same size as Texas, or about 1/3 larger than Sweden) and such data was never acquired by them. It simply was not in their mandate to do so.
So I'm curious how the POIs get into the POI database in the first place. ??