Rapid Addressing
Put in the postcode - Get the address
Postcode Finding
Input the parts of the address you know -
narrow down and identify the postcode
Mailing List Generation
Build mailing lists for bulk mailing for free
Gazetteer
A list of all towns and villages in the UK,
with their size and position
Where's My Nearest?
Find the local branches of a business
Map Referencing
Pinpoint the map position of a postcode
Web Use
Get a visitor's address from their postcode -
save time and eliminate mistakes.
Map Referencing
Map referencing, or more generally geo-referencing, is finding an (x, y) position or longitude/latitude pair for a point. As far as addressing data is concerned, this can be done at several levels.
Premise level:
The most detailed level is to find the (x, y) coordinate of a single house or other building. As far as is known, the only product that provides this is Address-Point which is produced by the Ordnance Survey. Arc en Ciel does not resell this product, but if you need this level of accuracy you can find more details at: www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/addresspoint.
Postcode level:
On average, a postcode covers 12 premises. A map reference for a postcode is therefore likely to be within a couple of hundred metres of any particular house, which is adequate for many applications.
Above: Example of Postcode level referencing.
Arc en Ciel provides the Royal Mail Postzon data which includes a grid reference for every postcode. This can be supplied as part of the Address or Address+ product, but is normally used by developers through the API. There is an extra charge for the supply of this data.
A variation on postcode-level geo-referencing is to start with a position and find an address. For example, a GPS device in a vehicle can get a longitude/latitude as it moves along and it might be useful to know the names of the streets it passes through. As part of its Developers API Arc en Ciel provides a function CodesInRadius which finds the postcodes within a given radius of a point. The nearest postcode can be found and used to generate the address.
Area/District level
A postcode "Area" is the first one or two letters. For example "CB". A District is the whole of the first half
of the postcode, such as "CB11".
We provide a component called AddressLocate to give grid references for all Areas and Districts. AddressLocate is not used on the desktop, but forms part of our Developers API.
The average distance across a District is +/- 2.7 km (1.7 miles). This is adequate accuracy for applications where a car or van is involved and a kilometre or two more or less is not critical. In built-up areas Districts are much smaller than in rural areas so giving increased accuracy where it is most useful.