Exercise 2: Creating a composite address locator

Complexity:

Beginner

Data Requirement:

ArcGIS Tutorial Data for Desktop

Data Path:

C:\ArcGIS\ArcTutor\Geocoding

Goal:

To create a composite address locator

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create a composite address locator.

A composite address locator consists of two or more individual address locators that allow addresses to be matched against the multiple address locators and find best matches. For example, a composite address locator may contain a street address locator and a ZIP Code locator. If an address fails to match against the street address locator, the address can fall back to match against the ZIP Code locator.

As with address locators, composite address locators are stored and managed in a folder of your choice. Before you create a composite address locator, you need to find or create the address locators you want to include in the composite address locator.

Legacy:

Locators should be stored in a file folder so you take advantage of new features that are not supported for locators stored in geodatabases, such as performance improvements, multithreading capabilities, and suggestions support. ArcGIS 10.4 is the last release to support storing locators in geodatabases.

Get the data

The data for this tutorial is available for download on arcgis.com.

1. Go to the item description web page of the geocoding tutorial data on arcgis.com.
2. Click Open > Download, and save the file locally.
3. Unzip the downloaded file.
4. It is recommended that you save the downloaded Geocoding folder to the following location on disk: C:\ArcTutor\Geocoding. This save location will be referred to throughout the tutorials, so saving in the same location will make the instructions clearer.

Create a composite address locator

To create a composite address locator, complete the following steps:

1. Start ArcCatalog.
2. Browse to the Geocoding folder of tutorial data that contains the Atlanta file geodatabase.
3. Right-click in the empty space of the Contents tab inside the Geocoding folder, and click New > Composite Address Locator.

   

   The Create Composite Address Locator dialog box appears.

4. Click the browse button next to the Address Locators text box.

   

   The Address Locators dialog box appears.

5. Browse to the Geocoding folder containing the Atlanta file geodatabase, choose the Atlanta address locator, and click Add.

   Tip:

   Instead of using the Address Locators dialog box, you can drag and drop locators from the Catalog Tree directly into the Participating Address Locator section of the Create Composite Address Locator dialog box.

6. Repeat step 4, browse to the Geocoding folder again, choose the Postal_US locator, and click Add.

   

   The two address locators now appear in the Participating Address Locators section. Under the Name column, each locator is automatically given a name that the composite address locator references. Field mapping for all the participating address locators is also automatically created. The fields become the input fields for the composite address locator.

   

Changing the Selection Criteria section is optional.
7. Make sure the output composite locator will be stored in the folder that contains the Atlanta geodatabase by following the substeps below.
   1. Click the browse button next to the Output Composite Address Locator text box.

      The Output Composite Address Locator dialog box appears.

   2. Browse to the Geocoding folder that contains the Atlanta geodatabase.
   3. Type Atlanta_Composite in the Name text box.
   4. Click Save to accept the changes and close the dialog box.

   The output path appears in the Output Composite Address Locator text box.

   

8. Click OK to start creating the composite address locator.

   When the process finishes, the new composite address locator appears in the Geocoding folder that contains the Atlanta geodatabase alongside the two locators used to create it.