Time for an update on the geocoding project.
The automated download/extract/install is just about complete. During a test run supported by the folks at http://www.hksi.net I found out that the full dataset is too big to run under MSDE's 2 gig limit. Loading Type 1 data properly indexed for forward and reverse Geocoding weighs in at 4 gigs.
This is disappointing since I was hoping anyone would be able to run this for free. It's especially difficult since I don't even have SQL Server at home and I'm developing this with MSDE.
So I've decided to develop 2 versions in parallel. One in SQL Server and the other using Sqlite.
The Sqlite version runs great and will hopefully run in windows and linux.
I haven't done any benchmarking, but forward geocoding takes about the same amount of time.
SQL Server does however shine at the reverse geocoding with results in less than a second with the as yet unreleased .06 scripts. Sqlite can take up to 5 seconds at the moment.
Timeline?
I'd expect an initial version up by the end of the weekend.