HERE Geocoding Business Use and Functions

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Last year we introduced HERE Location Services on the SAP API Business Hub. We launched 19 enterprise-grade location APIs for SAP Developers to discover, test and consume on the SAP Cloud platform. Location technology is used across several business operations, and the HERE Geocoding API is the backbone for most of those operations. We want to take a deeper dive into some of those business operations and the benefit of a geocoder based on quality, flexibility, functionality and experience. If you are itching to get started, scroll right away to the bottom to get to our tutorial on GitHub.



Business Use

• For Field Workforce or a Dispatcher dependent upon location-based appointments, geocoding helps with pinpointing a person, place, line or area that’s relevant to search – even if input is incomplete or incorrect. Geocoding uses an intelligent ranking algorithm to provide accurate results when address input is ambiguous. It first compares the input then assess result relevance, then a match code, level and type are given. The distance to the location and the type of place are also considered.


• Deliver efficiencies to Transportation Management uses, by allowing logistic companies to find accurate location information to deliver products or services. The HERE geocoder includes hyper-precise point addresses, which are comprised of house number data for more than 300 million addresses in over 65 countries.


• Improve response time per single coordinate and boost the efficiency of Business Intelligence when processing high volumes of data. Batch geocoder and multi-reverse geocoder enables multiple addresses through a single file upload. The multi-reverse geocoder also allows hundreds of single coordinates to be sent in one request. Geocoding includes administrative and postal code boundary shapes that are commonly used as map overlays on various levels for states, countries, cities, districts and more. This allows Data Scientist to spot location-based trends and patterns.

                                          

The following geocoding functions are available to SAP developers:

• Forward geocoding for converting addresses into geo-coordinates


• Reverse geocoding for getting a usable description of a location from a set of geo-coordinates


• Multi-reverse geocoding for processing up to 100 pairs of geographic coordinates in a single synchronous request


• Autocomplete which suggests potential matches after three characters, street names, house numbers, cities, postal codes and countries.


• Free-text search for finding an address using a combination of country, state, country, city, postal code, district, street or house number


• Landmark search for finding an address for areas, landmarks, airports, and locations of national importance


• Admin Shapes and Postal Codes displayed as multi-polygon coordinates.

 Getting Started

The following are prerequisites for getting started:

•  SAP Developer account (http://api.sap.com)


•  HERE (free) Developer account (https://developer.here.com)

My colleague Michael Palermo published an SAPUI5 introduction to HERE Geocoding GitHub workshop with code to get started. However, if you need a more integration support, he also wrote a technical article about integrating HERE Location Services on SAPUI5 with an additional GitHub workshop.