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World Geocode Service (Arcgis Online)

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03-29-2016 03:13 PM
RobertStevens
Frequent Contributor

I have been using this service for a while now to geocode addresses.

It is described somewhat in this URL (and other pages navigable from it)

https://developers.arcgis.com/rest/geocode/api-reference/overview-world-geocoding-service.htm

The service creates many output fields, many of which seem to

be completely useless as they are always blank. Others seem

redundant.

My questions to the group are two:

1. Is there a better geocoder to use (that doesn't cost extra money!)
     One would think that an online service should be the most up-to-date.

2. More importantly, is there, in the configuration of this geocoding service, a place
     where one can specify that one doesn't want certain fields? Some other geocoders

     do seem to have that configurability.

At the moment, I subsequently run the Delete Field tool to remove many

of these fields (those in red below). Sure, I could just leave them; but they occupy

space and when one looks at the data one has constantly to

scroll umpteen times to the right to see the actual non-geographic

data that was in the original dataset. I suppose I could just hide them.

I list the fields here (not in order). Those in blue seem useful (even if not to me).

Those in red seem useless (I find many of them are blank)

Status

Score

Match_type

Match_addr

Addr_type

AddNumFrom

AddNumTo

Side

X

Y

DisplayX

DisplayY

Xmin

Xmax

Ymin

Ymax

Type

PlaceName

Place_addr

Phone

URL

Rank

AddBldg

AddNum

StPreDir

StPreType

StName

StType

StDir

StAddr

Nbrhd

City

Subregion

Region

Postal

PostalExt

Country

LangCode

Distance

ARC_Address

ARC_Neighborhood

ARC_City

ARC_Subregion

ARC_Region

ARC_Postal

ARC_PostalExt

ARC_CountryCode

(As you can see, there are a hell of a lot of these fields, and there seems to be redundancy in meaning).

It would also seem that if one deletes these fields one might not easily be able re-geocode the addresses.

I have not tested that, though.

1 Reply
RobertStevens
Frequent Contributor

And another thing about this blessed Online World Geocode service is that one of the fields it returns is named city.

This causes one of my fields, also named city, to be renamed as city_1. I DONT WANT THIS.

Why the hell does it mess with my field names instead of changing its own? Or using a name

less likely to cause a conflict like that?

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