Geocoding and address management > Distributing your address locator
Collecting address locators |
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Release 9.2
Last modified January 2, 2008 |
Print all topics in : "Distributing your address locator" |
Once you have determined how you want to distribute your address locator, data preparation and management can be performed in ArcCatalog.
ArcGIS file-based or geodatabase workspace
The process of distributing an address locator in a file-based or geodatabase workspace is similar.
You can simply copy the address locator in the workspace to the public folder. These address locator files can be copied to any other file or directory through copy and paste commands in ArcCatalog.
By default, address locators embed the geocoding rule bases. Thus, when you share an address locator, you do not need to provide the geocoding rule base files. For best practices, it is recommended to leave this option checked. This will avoid having to distribute the rule bases, especially those custom rule bases not shipped with the software. You can then skip the following instructions.
However, if you unchecked the Embed geocoding rules in locator option in the Advanced Locator Properties dialog box and you have created custom geocoding rules that you want to distribute, they should also be copied into the public folder. These files do not appear in ArcCatalog and will need to be distributed using Windows Explorer or a more general file management application.
To determine which rule base files the address locator uses, open the address locator file that was copied into the public folder with text-editing software. This file will have a .loc file extension. The properties that define the .mat and .stn files are FileMAT and FileSTN, respectively. You can locate these properties and make note of their names using the Find function in the text editing software.
With these names, open the ArcGIS/Geocode folder and copy the needed files. The name that was associated with the .stn file has several files that share that same name, and all these files need to be copied into the public folder.
Any custom rule base files should be copied into the user's ArcGIS/Geocode folder if you want to allow others to build or use address locators based on the custom rule base.
Learn more about making your address locator public
ArcSDE
If you have created an address locator within an ArcSDE geodatabase and geocoding rule files are embedded in the locator, you just need to modify the privileges for the address locators to allow others to use them for geocoding.
If you want to distribute ArcSDE address locators, you can copy and paste the address locators to the desired location.
Learn more about managing address locators in ArcCatalog