Re: What are the design criteria for primary keys?

>> Most people don't bother normalizing address attributes when a postal code is involved even though strictly speaking one might think they should. Because they know that the postal services of a hundred countries will never agree on a standard, let alone the upwards of a million municipalities and other jurisdictions could never follow the same standard for street addresses <<

LOL! I do. Melissa Data happens to be my favorite mailing address software, but there are many others. And they are cheap. They enforce the CASS standards from the USPS (http://www.usps.com/ncsc/ addressservices/certprograms/cass.htm).

There is the Federal 9-1-1 (Nine-one-one) emergency services program which has assigned a standard address format to everything in the US (I am not sure if Canada is also in the program). I learend about it last year, when I was working on Voter Registation and re-districting for Texas. What used to be "The Miller Farm" is now assigned a house number, street name, city, stte and ZIP.

As far as foreign mail goes,there are the International Postal Union standards and EU regulations. My current client just bought companies in Germany, Netherlands, the UK and Austrailia as part of their expansion. They broker shipping of all kinds from small parcels to heavy equipment. They are very concerned with street addresses and GIS. Remember FIDDLER ON THE ROOF? Q: "Rabbi, is there a proper prayer for the Tsar?" A: "Yes, there is a proper prayer for everything!"

If you are willing to research, the vast majority of the time, you will find a Standard (or two or more) for everything. We seldom do really new work with a totally new problem. Received on Sat Sep 04 2010 - 22:59:24 CEST