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Mouli · Beginner Joined: 07 Jun 2003 Posts: 18 Topics: 7

Hi All,

Do we have any tool or utility available that can calculate distance between two zip codes?. The zip code will be called from the Cobol program.

Does IBM has any product or is it something doable in mainframe?

Thanks for your Help

Mouli
_________________
Regards,
Mouli

kolusu · Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 9:35 pm Post subject:

Mouli,

Finally got around to look at this question. I think it can be done. Based on the formula described here

http://www.meridianworlddata.com/Distance-Calculation.asp

Get the latitude and longitude of the cities in question in decimal degrees. North and South America, Longitude will always be a negative number.

There are tons of places on the net to get the Longitude and latitudes in decimal degrees like this

http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/zcta5.txt

The latitude and longitude are at the very end (last 2 fields).

Latitude (decimal degrees) First character is blank or "-" denoting North or South latitude respectively

Longitude (decimal degrees) First character is blank or "-" denoting East or West longitude respectively

I used Denver and san jose as samples (untested code). This will give you the distance in miles. If you want in Kilometers change the constant 3963.0 to 6378.8 as the radius of the earth is assumed to be 6,378.8 kilometers, or 3,963.0 miles.

Mouli · Beginner Joined: 07 Jun 2003 Posts: 18 Topics: 7

Thanks Kolusu. I looked at the website (http://www.meridianworlddata.com/Distance-Calculation.asp) before posting my question and yes it is basicallly our old mathematics formula for two distance..
SQRT((X2-X1)2 + (Y2-Y1)2) (Read as whole square)

Also thanks for the lat and log values for the US zipcodes. I dont have this information before.

The calculation what is being mentioned is purely a mathematics. But it doesnt reflect about the short distance (I know my question was not talking about the Shortest distance intially).

To be more clear, We are looking for some mainframe based solution which should give us the Shortest Distance between two zip codes. When i say the shortest distance i mean the Driving distance. Take a example of Best Buy shop. If we give our zip code, it will tell all the nearest Best Buy shops for our zip code. I think they are using the GPS techonlogy to get this information. But still this is also one such software. Can this be done in our mainframe world ?. Am i asking too much from a Compute Giant !.

Anyway ideas, thoughts comments are Welcome !

Thanks
Mouli
_________________
Regards,
Mouli

kolusu · Posted: Thu May 14, 2009 11:22 am Post subject: