What to do with redundant Locator input fields with a composite Locator?

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08-09-2023 01:47 AM
PhilippeDerynck
New Contributor II

Hi, I'm creating Composite Locator with 3 Locators for Belgian Addresses, names of waterways and places. Each Locator has 10 Input Fields (Address, Address2, Address3, City, Countrycode, Neighborhood, Postal, PostalExt, Region, Subregion). Only some (max. 4) of these Locator Input Fields ara useful (Address (for street), Adress2 (for house number), City (for municipality) and Postal (for zip code)), the others don't contain any related input data. In Belgium official government address datasets there are no Countrycode, Neighborhood, PostalExt, Region or Subregion defined. (It should be possible to remove or disable these Locator Input fields in the first place I think)

When creating a Composite Locator it's mandatory to map all these Locator Input Fields, so there are a lot of redundant Locator Input Fields to map. One option is to leave them there, but that is very confusing to a user of the Composite Locator in ArcGis Pro and it comes across as sloppy and not applied to Belgian addresses.
Another option is to create 1 collect input field (unmapped) and place all unused Locator Input Fields below. This is accepted when creating a Composite Locator, but gives an error message (00010) when geocoding indicating that the Locator is invalid.
If you create 3 Input Fields each with the Locator Input fields of the corresponding Locators, it will work.
Again, of course, this is somewhat strange for a user. A user expects to see only the useful input fields when geocoding in ArcGIS Pro.

So, what to do with redundant Locator input fields with a composite Locator? Is there a solution for this so that a user only sees useful input fields when geocoding?

thanks in advance for taking a look at this.

Screenshots from the option with 3 Input Fields with redundant Locator Input fields.

PhilippeDerynck_0-1691570329210.png  

PhilippeDerynck_1-1691570401838.png

 

 




2 Replies
ShanaBritt
Esri Regular Contributor

The input fields of the composite needs to match the input fields of the participating locators in order for the composite to be valid for batch geocoding. If you were using the single locator to search for addresses in the Geocode Table tool, the same 10 input fields would show and  the user is expected to map the relevant fields from their input table. The same applies to composites, the input fields from the participating locators are going to show as the input fields in the batch geocoding tools, but removing the input fields that will not be used for geocoding will cause the composite to be invalid and batch geocoding will fail.

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PhilippeDerynck
New Contributor II

I'm aware of this and that's why I have to map all the unused (not functional) Locator Input Fields in the Composite locator. My question remains... what to do with redundant (not functional) Locator input fields with a composite Locator? With the ArcMap Locator technology, you had control over de Input Fields and you had to configure only the functional Input fields.
Most Belgian (European) adresses don't have a official "Neighborhoud", "PostalExt", "Subregion", "Region" and "Countrycode". The Input Fields are not functional in a (Composite) Locator based on Belgian (European) adresses.
ESRI has many European national and regional government customers, it would be good to take their expectations and needs into account in the further development of ArcGIS Pro.

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