by MarkC
13. January 2010 14:42
We've been offering our postcode software via web services for several years, but we occasionally get requests from customers to install it on their own systems for reasons of performance (they have a poor Internet connection) or availability (their Internet connection doesn't always work, or they don't have one). Well, we're working on this now and hope to have two new deployment options ready in the next few weeks. The three options we will have available will be:
- Hosted web services
This is the option we have now - your website or software makes web service requests to our hosted web services. You don't have any software or data from us to keep up to date.
- On-premise web services
You get a copy of our web services and data files to install on your own server, which can then be accessed by software throughout your organisation.
- Embedded API
You get a lightweight .NET API and a copy of our data files to install along with your software. Each PC your software is installed on gets its own copy of the data.
These three options give you the chance to add postcode lookup functionality into your software or website in the way that is most appropriate to you. We still highly recommend the hosted web service option whenever you have an appropriate Internet connection as you then have no on-going administration work to do to keep your copy of the data up-to-date, but when that isn't possible the other options are always available.