I guess I don't fully appreciate the distinction between making them objects and not making them objects or calling it a service...
If you do 'verification' in tcl procs the best you are going to do is confirm that an address 'looks' well-formed.
I make a strong distinction between well-formed and valid data. Well formed passes some initial regexp rules that you can do either client side or server side with a round trip. It's not VALID unless its actually accurate. It's just like the email registration process - OACS makes sure there is an @ sign and thats about it. If I want to ensure that I have VALID emails, I have the system send the email and make the new user click through from the email to fully register.
I am trying to get the community to incorporate at least the fundamentals of correct address processing - the USPS and Bundespost will both give good discounts for properly formatted and address verified mail.
If I can save .03 per mailing per piece, I save a good amount of money over time. If the company sends even a moderate amount of mail, its worth doing properly.
The added bonus to us as developers is we can charge our customers to validate the data through 3rd party address quality providers.
Longitude/Latitude at the ZIP code level? That is based on the centroid and can be many miles away from the address. I can get it to the street address level - its used for proximity, routing, etc. It's all from TIGER anyway. If a particular user doesn't need it - they can leave it blank, but if I send out my list to get geocoded, I'd like to have a consistent place to put it.
And when you say marketing data - remember that once you wipe off the polish - that is also just TIGER data from the census bureau. Classifying an address as falling into a specific DMA is a US government distinction, not some arbitrary marketing decision. That doesn't work across all lands, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of other countries over time will do it similarly.
I would also argue that you might want to add timezone to the addresses - it's more of a warehouse mentality - put the facts in with the record itself. If you want to call someone who is registered in your system (customer support for example), there are only certain hours where you're allowed to do so.
Whee! Another can of worms.
