[Ecrit] review of draft-marshall-ecrit-similar-location-03

["Bradner, Scott" <[e-mail]>]

as I agreed to do during the ecrit meeting - here is a review of  draft-marshall-ecrit-similar-location-03

This looks like a very useful and simple (the two do not always go together) addition to LoST - 
something that could be lifesaver in some cases.  (There was a story on the news within the last 
year about sending emergency response to the wrong address because of just the type of issue 
that is included as an example - the address was incomplete and the responders were sent to 
the only address that came up - at least that is how the low pass filter of the news reported it)

Section 1.

current text:

This enhancement to the validation feature within LoST is required in order to ensure a high level 
of address matching, to overcome user and system input errors, and to support the usefulness of
 location-based systems in general.

Comment:

seems to me that the underlying purpose is to increase the likelihood of returning the 
actual correct civic address at the cost of possibly returning additional valid but incorrect addresses.

 

Section 2.

The RFC 2119 cite is not needed since the capitalized terms are not used in the document

 
overall.

Would there be benefit to adding a section describing the behavior where the LoST server has 
been upgraded to support this feature but the client has not?  e.g., would there be a way to also
return some indication in the completeLocation to say that there are similar addresses and that 
they should update their client - and maybe return one of the similar addresses or double them up?

     e.g. 6000 15th Ave NW|SW Seattle, WA 98107

Ugly to be sure - but …  (if this is done there should be guidance that says what the client should do -
e.g. if there is a similarLocation then ignore the completeLocation)

also - should there be any discussion of what errors or warnings a LoST server should or should not 
return if it is returning a similarLocation? (maybe to deal with the upgrade question above)

Scott