What is Geocoding?

Geocoding is the process of assigning map coordinate locations to addresses in a database. A GIS is capable of doing this by comparing the elements of each address in the database (e.g., the number, prefix direction, street name, suffix direction, and type) to the attributes of each line segment in a street centerline layer to find a match. The starting and ending address of the matched line segment is used to locate the precise coordinate position. The output of the geocoding process is a point layer attributed with all of the data from the input database.