Best practice for international addresses

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

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* 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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