Searching by UK postcode not as good as it used to be?

[Demo]

We have a solution that calculates a route, typically between two UK
postcodes. Following what I presume is a recent update to VE, we are now
having issues with VE finding locations based on just postcode. The issue is
visible not just through the VE web service, but also on maps.live.com as
well. An example for UK people would be searching for a specific postcode,
for example SS156AB fails to find anything, yet SS15 6AB does work. The
presence of the space in the postcode field now seems to be mandatory, where
it never used to be, and in addition, the flexibility of this search in
general doesnt appear to be as good as before. I know there's ways of
handling the postcode to insert a space etc, etc, etc but the issue I have is
that this functionality seems to have changed without warning, and has
knocked out several applications that used to work ok with postcodes in any
format, and also, seemed to work better with partial addresses as well. Can
anyone explain this new behaviour - is this intentional, or will this be
addressed in a future update. I dont see why flexibility in the original
approach has now been binned for a more restrictive approach. Also, more
importantly, this change has been applied, seemingly without notice unless
I've missed a communication somewhere, which has lead to downtime on a
production system.

[Derek Chan]

Hi,

This newsgroup is really for MWS related issues and for this kind of request
you should contact the Virtual Earth Support group (assuming that you have a
contract with Microsoft). Otherwise, you can try the MSDN VE forums at:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vemapcontroldev/threads/

Interestingly enough, MWS doesn't suffer from this issue but I have no idea
why VE is being affected after the recent upgrade.

Regards,
--
Infusion Development
http://www.infusion.com

Post by Demo
We have a solution that calculates a route, typically between two UK
postcodes. Following what I presume is a recent update to VE, we are now
having issues with VE finding locations based on just postcode. The issue is
visible not just through the VE web service, but also on maps.live.com as
well. An example for UK people would be searching for a specific postcode,
for example SS156AB fails to find anything, yet SS15 6AB does work. The
presence of the space in the postcode field now seems to be mandatory, where
it never used to be, and in addition, the flexibility of this search in
general doesnt appear to be as good as before. I know there's ways of
handling the postcode to insert a space etc, etc, etc but the issue I have is
that this functionality seems to have changed without warning, and has
knocked out several applications that used to work ok with postcodes in any
format, and also, seemed to work better with partial addresses as well. Can
anyone explain this new behaviour - is this intentional, or will this be
addressed in a future update. I dont see why flexibility in the original
approach has now been binned for a more restrictive approach. Also, more
importantly, this change has been applied, seemingly without notice unless
I've missed a communication somewhere, which has lead to downtime on a
production system.