Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Comments on the new postal-address module (and kin)

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16: Re: Comments on the new postal-address module (and kin) (response to 1)
Posted by Jon Griffin on 05/29/03 09:57 PM
As I stated above, this is all fine. No matter if you call it marketing or whatever. It just needs to be its own package.

It really isn't a part of the addresses in the world.

See if you can verify this legitimate address: 

Calle 48 % 29b y 29f
Num. 29b03
Buena Vista Playa 
La Habana Cuba
This is a legitimate address and will probably never have data quality needs.

There are many ways of guaranteeing the data purity, being in the core address data model is not really a good solution (in fact I would argue it is wrong). So why don't you just make a package that depends on postal-address and use the data from there. That is easy and what a service is meant to do. You can even make tcl procs to verify whatever you need.

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17: Re: Comments on the new postal-address module (and kin) (response to 16)
Posted by Alfred Werner on 05/29/03 10:33 PM
Jon, Jon, Jon :)

Challenging me to find the information about Cuba is meaningless. As far as I know, it's a federal crime to conduct business there - and Amnesty International isn't permitted to visit the country - so let's just put that red herring aside, shall we? (http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/cub-summary-eng)
I have a feeling that my clients would be satisfied if I could tell them how many subscribers were from Cuba. Does finding one example like that actually discredit my point about all the other locations? Are you really worried about the HR-XML implications for Cuba?

I live in Connecticut - most of my users and clients are in the United States.

You live in Las Vegas - most of your users and clients are probably in the United States.

Matthew's address is at Berkeley - most of his users and clients are probably in the United States.

Those of my clients who conduct business on the Internet internationally are primarily concerned with Europe and Japan, Mexico and Brazil ..

As far as I have been able to tell, all of the mentioned countries are following this trend toward address quality - I already provided examples in US/UK/Germany - there is a page on the japanpost website but I'm not THAT interested .. If I run the address I showed above in Germany - that puts the site in Bayern as the Ort - same as the PMSA. The same kind of data is being provided all over the place.

My only point here has been and continues to be - an address is at a physical point in space. Those physical points in space have specific characteristics that rarely change - what major city are they near? What is their exact latitude and longitude? What time zone are they in?

I see them as all being intrinsically tied together - the only thing that DOES change is who is at the address. The melissadata example I provided doesn't say anything about who is there - it just gives you the 'fact table' about that location. The one thing that changes in that example is the political data which I agree is not relevant.