We are pleased to present our 2014Q2.0 release. New in this release are:

• Address Powersearch™: Instant single line search results for 29 countries
• Flexible spelling correction during verification
• Reference data improvements for selected countries
• Improved reference data for Canada
• Improved geocoding for Brazil

Check out our 2014Q2.0 Release Webinar held on April 24th, 2014:

Please note, this video is no longer available. In this video, Loqate CTO Paul Flew and Director of Engineering Uma Ramamurthy take the time to discuss the new features of the Q2 release which include documentation and demo UI updates, improvements in spelling correction capabilities and an introduction to the new Address PowerSearch™ solution.

General Suggestions & Tips

For the best results, install the 2014Q2.0 release as soon as your application development cycle allows it. The 2014Q2.0 release makes improvements in both the throughput of the verification process and the quality of the results.

Please remember to update both the program files and the reference data. The improvements in the Loqate Engine are tied to the data in the Global Knowledge Repository and the combination works better. If you can’t update both in your application, please contact Loqate Support prior to upgrading so we can help you.

Major Local API Features

Address Powersearch™

Loqate’s new Address Powersearch™ offers instant single line search results for 29 countries. It provides faster, more accurate address capture and verification to improve customer service and reduce the costs associated with inaccurate address data. Address Powersearch covers the following countries, with more to be added in future releases:

• Argentina
• American Samoa
• Australia
• Azerbaijan
• Brazil
• Canada
• Cyprus
• Germany
• Denmark
• Federated States of Micronesia
• France
• United Kingdom
• Guernsey
• Greece
• Guam
• Indonesia
• Isle of Man
• Jersey
• Marshall Islands
• Northern Mariana Islands
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Puerto Rico
• Palau
• Russia
• Singapore
• Turkey
• United States
• United States Virgin Islands

Address Powersearch will require a paid license in addition to the basic Address Verify license. Once purchased, this license will allow you to download the data updates for the specific countries you requested.

Here is an overview of how Address Powersearch works. When you run the Search method, the Loqate Engine will first look for the corresponding auto-complete index. If present, the method will attempt to return a list of candidate addresses instantly. If the index is not present, or if the index does not return any results, the older search process will be triggered.

• Auto-complete indexes use only the first 7 characters to search within the US and Canada. The other supported countries use up to 10 characters to search.
• The above countries are supported for Latin characters. In addition, auto-complete works for Hellenic characters (Greece).
• Additional auto-complete indexes for countries that have reference data at least to the premise level will be released in a phased approach.
• Auto-complex index files can be downloaded via Install Manager. Users will need to have their licenses upgraded to have the auto-complete index-related product codes in their license.

Flexible Spelling Correction

This functionality has significantly enhanced the use of the reference data during the parsing process. This provides two major benefits:

1. Better handling of unusual or ambiguous address structures. (e.g. ‘5904 CRESCENT BEACH ROAD KP N VAUGHN WA 98394 USA’, with the inclusion of the unusual ‘KP’ term within the Thoroughfare; and ‘60 Boulevard Saint Michel Paris France’, where ‘Saint Michel’ is both a possible ThoroughfareName or Locality, and ‘Paris’ is both a possible Locality or AdministrativeArea.)
2. Better handling of spelling errors. (e.g. ‘Hortencio Escobar Number 520 Francisco Morat 079-3170 Brazil’, where ‘Hortencio Escobar Number’ should be ‘Rua Hortêncio Escobar Nunes’, ‘Francisco Morat’ should be ‘Francisco Morato’, and ‘079-3170’ should be ‘07930-170’; and ‘7804 Mid City Blvd Fort Worth TX 76180 USA’, where ‘Mid City Blvd’ should be ‘Mid Cities Blvd’.)

Adding this capability further increases Loqate’s ability to verify and correct a wide variety of worldwide address data.

Reference Data Improvements for Selected Countries

We have also Lexicon and Context rule improvements for 18 and 3 countries respectively as part of the release. This is part of our effort for continuous improvement. The updated rules make the engine better at parsing addresses in these countries and therefore at correcting or verifying them. Other enhancements include:

• Brazil geocoding improvements: We have updated our reference data by combining data sets and normalizing our administrative areas to better reflect the local standards. This update provides 4 million additional geocodes.
• Canadian data updates: Loqate provides two types of data for Canada, the standard coverage and Software Evaluation and Recognition Program (SERP)-compliant data which is available for a premium price. We have updated the standard Canada dataset by adding 22,749 new postal codes, which translate to 126,000 additional addresses in the reference database.

 New Server Options

• CombinedVerifyMethods: If this option is set to YES or ON or TRUE or 1, the flexible spelling correction option will be enabled during verification process. If this option is set to NO or OFF or FALSE or 0, the flexible spelling correction option will be disabled during verification process.
• ConfigurationFilename: loqate.ini is the default name of the configuration file for the Loqate Engine. If a different name is to be used for this configuration file, the file can be renamed and the new name should be passed via the above option before calling the Server’s init function.
• MaximumInstanceCount: This option allows user to limit the number of maximum simultaneous server instances that are open. The value can be set to an integral numeric value which is used as that limit at runtime of the engine.
• SearchAliasPreference: This option allows user to specify whether search results should include results from all aliases or only the first alias in the reference data for a given record. The default is to search in the first alias only. If this option is set to “EXHAUSTIVE,” all aliases will be search candidates.

Updated Server Options

• FieldNameWeight: This option now allows setting different values to individual address fields (i.e. Organization=240|AdministrativeArea=100|50).

Cloud API Updates

The Loqate Cloud will be updated to 2014Q2.0 along with the general release. The following list provides a summary of new features available through our Cloud APIs.

• REST API: Address Powersearch functionality provided as default for the stated countries (see above). This means the auto-complete indexes will be used when only a country (ctry) and one address line (addr, add1[-n]) are used.
• REST API: AMAS and CASS are being enabled on both Transactional and Batch APIs. More details on how to access these processes will be made available at everythinglocation.com shortly.
• REST API: Batch Cloud now provides users the ability to delete the input and output files that are saved when a batch job is created/run. This component will be extended for transactional usage during Q2.
• REST API: As a security enhancement, a session key may now be used instead of an API key to access the service in a type-ahead environment. Session keys can be created via the session endpoint, and have an expiry of either 50 web service requests, 300 seconds or when session is recalled.
• New pre-release demo suite for partners, available by invite or by request.

Other Local API Updates

Please see below for a list of cases resolved in this release. Sometimes the case descriptions we are supplied with can be difficult to understand, so please contact support@loqate.com for further information about any solved cases.

• Case 00001564: lqtServer->init() doesn’t seem to return granular enough error status codes
• Case 00001570: init of database
• Case 00001612: Slow performance on CHN verification
• Case 00001996: Loqate should produce an error or warning if asked to verify an address and no vfy file exists
• Case 00002239: Puerto Rico not following standard
• Case 00002262: Come check out our new License Installation Manager (beta)! customer question
• Case 00002332: End-customer feedback
• Case 00002360: Loqate core dumps on SunOSx64
• Case 00002400: Search with OutputScript=”Native” returns a results with some address components in Latin characters
• Case 00002547: Installation Manager: “Unknown error during the installation” message
• Case 00002616: Mirror problem of 2236 (in Korean, Native output gives locality in Latin)
• Case 00002669: Install Manager: valid license reported as invalid
• Case 00002783: Request: Silent Install Manager with offline and online option
• Case 00002896: Floor matching
• Case 00002914: Apt/Ste number incorrectly changed
• Case 00003007: Loqate
• Case 00003015: Failed to verify Street because of incorrect post code
• Case 00003079: Issues with GKR Installer for 2013Q4
• Case 00003093: Correctly process input fields if there are one or more trailing spaces
• Case 00003154: Crash in liblqtcr during large volume processing using Q4 6000 build
• Case 00003167: Segmentation fault on batch verify
• Case 00003244: Failure to initialize Loqate library
• Case 00003280: [URGENT] Dataset files
• Case 00003283: Crash in UAT environment
• Case 00003294: Loqate server creation fails and terminates Java VM
• Case 00003319: KOR’s Native country name
• Case 00003323: API / reference file version checking
• Case 00003325: URGENT | Loqate Q1 2014 library load issue
• Case 00003332: Loqate crashes with some test data sets when multithreaded
• Case 00003391: Geocode GKR Installer is Incorrect
• Case 00003416: Re-fielding Organization input
• Case 00003440: Installation failed
• Case 00003443: Install Manager issue behind proxy

Country Updates

We are continually improving our country data and rules/lexicons to support them. The table below shows which countries have been enhanced, and how, in this release.

• Case 00001933: Low match score for correct street
• Case 00002143: Loqate cleansing cities to be different than USPS
• Case 00002334: Wrong street name in Address1
• Case 00002441: Misspelling in country (output) – Afganistan/Afghanistan
• Case 00002602: Validation sample issue
• Case 00002732: Argentina
• Case 00002809: Taiwan address “號” parsing issue
• Case 00002872: Possible erroneous record in US reference data
• Case 00002887: Incomplete Brazil reference data – missing a post code and Bairro for Joacaba, SC
• Case 00002890: UK SuperAdministrative areas correction – Q4
• Case 00002912: Organization names or parts thereof corrupting output Premise or Thoroughfare fields
• Case 00002923: General issues with numeric street names having directionals
• Case 00002974: Paris street address not parsed correctly
• Case 00003044: Difficulty with Indonesian address
• Case 00003097: Can’t handle Navy Vessel designations for FPO military addresses if not contained in reference data
• Case 00003103: House number not returned when typed in wrong position
• Case 00003130: Parsing issue for UK record
• Case 00003160: Match score calculation seems incorrect
• Case 00003179: Subcase of 2923: General issues with numeric street names having directionals
• Case 00003210: Ambiguity in US reference data
• Case 00003238: Input in Locality vs input in address lines
• Case 00003240: Dropped input
• Case 00003249: POL performance issue
• Case 00003253: Inconsistent output of Ireland counties
• Case 00003257: Loqate Verify issue: CANADA wrong city: Calgary
• Case 00003296: Canada address issues -1730 7th Street SW Calgary AB
• Case 00003333: Invalid Address1 field cleansing
• Case 00003337: Missing Canada post codes
• Case 00003364: Destroyed German address
• Case 00003434: US address not verified
• Case 00003454: EverythingLocation – message from customer
• Case 00003465: Australia Address1/2 input results in garbled output

Summary of Improvement Changes

• Reference Data = All countries
• Lexicons = 18 countries
• Context Rules = 3 countries

Still Have Questions?

Contact Loqate support at support@loqate.com or your account manager.