Seperate database for address searches?

[George J]

I am still at the planning stage of creating my first database (doing the model to establish relationships), but i was wondering what to do about one of the 'feature' requests I have had. The database is to store data about properties, but a feature that will list all properties within x km is also required. I have managed to find OS data on the internet that gives the postcode of all streets and their longitude and latitude. https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload/products.html

As this data is quite extensive and will not be getting editted, i was wondering should this be kept in a seperate database and used only for these feature searches or would that just complicate the database for no reason?

I am still very much a newbie so i apologise if this seems like a basic query. I am also not sure if this should be an application, but i don't think so.

Any comments or advice would be welcome.
George

 

[Norie]

George

Do you know what you'll actually be getting from the OS? eg format, size etc

 

[George J]

Hi Norie

The file from the OS is a txt file (114.5MB)

PRINCES STREET:A8:325258:673840:324679:325837:673673:674005:EDINBURGH:New Town:City of Edinburgh:City of Edinburgh:NT27SE:NT27:Roads

The rest of this post is just more detail incase anyone else is looking for this type of stuff.

Table Structure
ALRESFORD ROAD - Feature name
B3404 - Road number classification
449590 - X co-ord for centre point of road object
129430 - Y co-ord for centre point of road object
448797 - X co-ord for SW corner of the road object box
450392 - X co-ord for NE corner of road object box
129422 - Y co-ord for SW corner of the road object box
129510 - Y co-ord for NE corner of road object box
WINCHESTER - Town in which the centre of the object falls
St. John and All Saints - 1990 boundaries description for the point at the centre of the object
Hampshire County - County in which the centre of the object falls
Winchester District Local - Authority in which the centre of the object falls
SU42NE - 1:10 000 tile reference for the centre point of the object
SU42 - 1:25 000 tile reference for the centre point of the object
Roads - Source of information


This would allow me to search for streets closeby (not by postcode - sorry the tile reference threw me for a sec).

There is another section that allows a full postcode search that i won't be using - 120 csv files (153MB) with Easting & Northing co-ordinates (not longitude & latitude). I thought i might be able to combine them, but the thought of conversion scared me off. http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/UsefulData/UTMFormulas.HTM

You can do the postcode search by town with csv data from this site http://www.dangibbs.co.uk/journal/free-uk-postcode-towns-counties-database
EH2 - 325400 - 674100 - 55.95417 - -3.19486 - Edinburgh - City of Edinburgh


Right, sorry about that but it was a pain to find that and it may help others.

 

[Norie]

George

I'm a little confused, are you going to use these other links instead of the OS data?

 

[George J]

Sorry about that.

No. I intend to use the data from the txt file mentioned at the very start of the post. I might need to do a calculation to convert to long/lat, but i was intending on using the text file only. I wasn't sure if that should be kept completely seperate or not.

 

[Norie]

George

What you want to do sounds, eg find properties within x km, as though it might be quite complicated.

So it might be better to have a separate database so the main database doesn't get too complicated.

It would be easy to link to when needed.

 

[George J]

Will do - thanks for that.
I was begining to scare myself with all that.