Re: OT: Address Fields

On Thursday 31 Jul 2003 10:39 in
<pan(dot)2003(dot)07(dot)31(dot)09(dot)39(dot)34(dot)792868(at)salterprojects(dot)com>, 2trax
(2trax(at)salterprojects(dot)com) wrote:

> It seems to me that the most flexible way is to use a text field to hold
> everything, apart from the country which suits a varchar? and perhaps have
> another dedicated varchar field to hold USA ZIP codes / UK post codes for
> easy searching?

There are ISO standard codes for countries: US, CA, GB, AU, etc. These each
fit into a fixed-width CHAR(2) field.

I would use a VARCHAR of some large size and map it into structured fields
using views. Each view is built with
WHERE country_code = 'xx'
for the matching 'xx' in the ISO standard. This will allow you to search in
a structured manner, provided you have the country code.

--
Regards,

Dave [RLU#314465]
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dwnoon(at)spamtrap(dot)ntlworld(dot)com (David W Noon)
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