PROBLEM SET

A non-technical company approached us to assist them with the design and implementation details of a web service.  Their customer needed an API that provide details of RF coverage for a given geographic location. Their customer supplied an RF coverage database in MapInfo format, allowing a lookup by geographic point.  The input geographic locations could be full address, zip code, a city/state combination or coordinates.  The provided RF coverage database was huge and slow to load/perform look-ups.

DEVELOPMENT TASKS

• Investigated and presented recommendations for the best web hosting deals for their requirements
• API required verification of geolocation via numerous inputs: just zipcode, or city/state combination, full address.  Settled on Mapquest API as the service to verify the input information.
• Created Powershell scripts to import coverage data into a format usable by service
• Based on our recommendations, the customer selected AWS EC2.  We assisted them in setting up AWS EC2 server and implementing API
• Wrote customer facing documentation on the API usage
• Investigated best format for lookup database – the coverage was for the entire US, so thousands of data items. Determined a spatial DBMS was the most efficient for lookup functionality.

END RESULT

After delivering the first web service for a pilot program, the company has seen a large adoption rate for the web service.  Customers are seamlessly utilizing the API in their web services.  Metrics are gathered from the API usage and those are being used to determine geographic areas with the greatest queries.