At the moment, we want to introduce you, as our target audience, to a brand called DistanceMatrix, to present the services and products that this brand can offer. DistanceMatrix is a service designed to measure the relevant distance between any two objects on the map, and it also helps calculate the time of your travel between certain checkpoints. All this is implemented with API technology which is quite common in modern digital applications and devices. To give our target audience a correct understanding of the goals while developing our product, it is necessary to describe its entire key function, options for individual technologies, as well as their adaptation to target enterprises and businesses.
Our products have several significant cool features compared to analogues. The key goal is to reduce the route calculation cost correlated with origin and destination. DistanceMatrix API will also help to take into account additional factors in the calculations, such as traffic congestion, a particular type of transport, and many other parameters. A sample of traffic data is formed from open sources after we calculate the travel time with the usage of specific formulas. It is important to note that this API provides a similar level of accuracy with the best analogues: Google, TomTom, and Bing. If you want to change Google API to our product, there will be no difficulties or inconvenience.
An important advantage of our products is that it is available in absolutely any part of the world, from where the client conducts his business.
Working algorithm
The Matrix API computes a traveler’s distance and time between two points and indicates the fastest way. At first, Geocode API will write special requests for the coordinates of these checkpoints. Then the Distance Matrix API will return a dataset that includes distance and time values for the checkpoint coordinate requests. This way, the Distance Matrix will be received in the well-known JSON format. At the output, we have a data matrix, where columns and rows contain blocks of information about a specific route and the distance and duration of the trip.
Key properties of DistanceMatrix Products
Now let us look at the products from DistanceMatrix in more detail, especially the Distance Matrix API. The primary role of this API is calculations and assistance in route assessment and planning. During the initial authorization, the user immediately receives an e-mail containing instructions for using the API and a unique token. This token is a guarantor of product testing within a week. It should be added that the API has many different ways of performing route calculations and various additional functionality. Opportunities may vary depending on whether real-time traffic is important to a user or not, which in turn allows you to select the desired query template.
One of the most basic functions of the Distance Matrix API with real-time traffic conditions is to help calculate the time spent on the road, taking into account traffic jams and other similar factors. We save you lots of time and perform such feats with high accuracy and within a reasonable time. When using the Real-time Distance Matrix API, the user has the right to form requests with a limit of no more than one hundred elements. For example, there may be matrices with dimensions 1×100, 10×10, and 5×20. Per development policy, the user has a chance to receive up to 50 units per second. If real-time traffic does not affect your business significantly, you can choose another version of Matrix API without traffic monitoring. You can save time and increase the API performance while neglecting such factors as traffic jams or roadblocks. These are the settings that allow you to get the desired response as quickly as possible – up to 300-500 units per second.
There is also an asynchronous version of the Distance Matrix API, where there is no limit to creating large requests. But the daily limit should not exceed 80000 meaningful units, and response time depends on the request size (up to 300 units per second). As a clear example, the user should not create more than ten requests with a dimension of 20×400. Using the asynchronous version of the Distance Matrix API allows large and complex routing queries or transportation to be done efficiently, especially for industries that deal with a huge number of origins and destinations.
The asynchronous version of the Distance Matrix API also comes in two versions – with or without traffic conditions, which means even more flexibility and adjustability for your enterprise in terms of routing, logistics, and time management. It can be said that despite all the limitations in terms of speed of calculation and element request, the product has two key advantages – the ability to calculate great queries and take into account various traffic restrictions in real-time. Asynchronous Distance Matrix API will be the best choice of options for this product in terms of calculating road matrices with tremendous dimensions. Such asynchronous requests’ creation is of great practical importance in logistics and transport management.
Another great product of our team, Geocoding APIs, works in two basic modes – direct geocoding and reverse geocoding. The main task of the geocoding API is to convert street addresses into a standard form of geographical coordinates – namely, the introduction of the terminology of latitude and longitude. Thus, this API is intended both as an address, street intersection, and location converter, and also allows you to add missing letters if we get the address with letters missing in words.
Reverse geocoding API works oppositely, transforming coordinates in geographic form into a natural language understandable to a person without specific mathematical skills. We can say that this product will be in great demand among, for example, private taxi drivers when they do not have enough accurate data about the destination addresses of passengers. The sufficient need for use can be attributed to food delivery couriers. It is also important to note that the accuracy of Geocoding APIs is in no way inferior to the accuracy of Google APIs. In short, DistanceMatrix can be extremely useful in many areas since so many human activities involve the need to manage travel time and correctly calculate distance – and our team will be happy to collaborate with customers on this.