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The universal method of identifying a location is by geographic coordinates, specifically latitude and longitude. Latitude measures the distance north and south, with the Equator being the central latitude. Longitude measures the distance east and west, with the Prime Meridian being the central longitude. A specific combination of latitude and longitude can identify your location within a matter of feet.
Databases are recording latitude and longitude coordinates with increasing frequency. Some database limit this to recording the geographic coordinates of their branches, or even just the central point of a zip code, called the centroid. Other databases record the geographic coordinates for every specific address. Geocoding services allow companies to submit any address in the world and get back the geographic coordinates for storing in the database. As techologies develop, expect more and more databases to include detailed geographic coordinates.
Geographic coordinates can be specified using two main approaches. The first approach shows degrees, minutes, seconds and hemispheres, and is the original approach used in early navigation. There are 180 degrees in a hemisphere, with 60 minutes in a degree, and 60 seconds in a minute. (Note that these minutes and seconds are measurements of a sphere, and not measurements of time.) The second approach uses decimal figures to show degrees, and fractional portions of degrees. The latter approach is often easier to use in basic computation. Omnidex supports both approaches to representing geographic coordinates.
Latitudes and longitudes differ in an important way. Lines of latitude are parallel, since they represent horizontal “slices” of the earth. As such, the distances between lines of latitude are always the same. Lines of longitude are not parallel. They are widest at the Equator, narrow as they approach the North and South Poles, and all converge into the same spot at the exact North and South Poles. As such, the distances between lines of longitude vary greatly. This requires more sophisticated mathematics in order to calculate the distances between two points.
, called Decimal Coordinates, is the