Hello!
Is there a server that an end user application can use to fetch XML data or would I need to set up my own server?
Regards,
Jens
No. I’m using api.openstreetmap.org for testing. But distributing an end user application that draws from that server would violate the usage policy: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_usage_policy
No, there isn’t really an server available for end user applications who’s purpose isn’t predominantly editing. Serving data from the API is quite resource intensive and OSM simply doesn’t have the hardware and monetary funds to support it.
So your best bet is to set up your own server. The code is all opensource, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to do so. Depending on your exact needs, there are a variety of different options of how to hand out data. Some of them are the rails_port (the software that runs the main OSM site in rails), cgimap (an optimised C++ implementation of the map call), xapi or TRAPI (a tiled XML api server that probably needs the least amount of resources to setup and run)
If your application is likely to only need a very small amount of resources, it might be possible to use either one of the XAPI servers or the TRAPI load balancer set up for the tiles@home project, but you would have to contact their respective maintainers.
Some of the commercial companies offering OSM consulting like cloudmade or geofabrik might also be able to offer you services for fetching XML, although I don’t know if they do and under what terms and conditions.
Thak you for the reply. That is pretty much what I was expecting. I will consider to set up my own server, but it’s a bit costly for a pet project.