>Hi,
>
>I would like to get the miles required to go from an address to another address.
>
>What are my options? (third party tools, build my own, databases, etc)
>
>Thanks

Depends on your usage. Others have given suggestions, some of which result in an "as the crow flies" distance. In our case, the mileages are used to bill clients and to pay vendors (truck drivers) and accuracy is important. There are services and third party packages that provide this data but it is usually in the contract with the customer/vendor as to what the "authority" is. For many years, in the trucking industry, Rand McNally was/is the standard and they provide a service for a fee.

With that service, and probably others your mileage request can include parameters such as "hazardous goods routing", household goods mileage, etc etc.

We use MileMaker to get not only mileages, but directions etc . But we save the data in a local table which we refer to first. That saves my client some fees but we also have to be mindful of possible updates.

Hope this helps,

Ken