Re: Best practice for international addresses

I was looking at Cart software on the weekend and found that "The Exchange
Project" used an "address format" table:

# 1 - Default, 2 - USA, 3 - Spain, 4 - Singapore
1 $firstname $lastname$cr$streets$cr$city, $postcode$cr$statecomma$country
2 $firstname $lastname$cr$streets$cr$city, $state $postcode$cr$country
3 $firstname $lastname$cr$streets$cr$city$cr$postcode - $statecomma$country
4 $firstname $lastname$cr$streets$cr$city ($postcode)$cr$country

The country table (and every table containing an address) had a field to
indicate which address format to use.

Frank

At 06:30 PM 12/11/01 -0800, Gary Hoffman wrote:
>Can anyone refer me to a source of advice for setting up an address
>database that is general enough to handle postal addresses from any
>country of the world? At our graduate school, we get mail from all over,
>but particularly countries in the Pacific region. We have built several
>address book type databases, mostly on the U.S. model, but extended with a
>few fields. But we have never been able to format the output properly for
>all countries. We always seem to be fiting the square pegs from various
>countries into the round holes of whatever field schema we choose.
>
>I'm not looking for a long discussion here, just a referral to a good
>source of experience and advice.
>
>Cheers,
>Gary
>
>**************************************************************************
>* Gary B. Hoffman, Computing Services Manager e-mail: ghoffman(at)ucsd(dot)edu *
>* Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) *
>* University of California, San Diego (UCSD) voice: (858) 534-1989 *
>* 9500 Gilman Dr. MC 0519 fax: (858) 534-3939 *
>* La Jolla, CA 92093-0519 USA web: http://www-irps.ucsd.edu/ *
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