[CS-FSLUG] International Data - Country codes anyone

[Georges Rodier]

On Wednesday 28 November 2007 13:40, Josiah Ritchie wrote:
> Something new and interesting about my new position here at FIM is the
> consideration of International data. I
...
>
> Does anyone have any experience in this sort of thing they'd like to
share?
>
> JSR/

My least favourite databases used few fields for address data - easy to set
up - frustrating to use internationally.

Modern word processing programs make it relatively easy to set up rules for
displaying or hiding fields in correspondence type documents. So it seems
best, for example, to set up USA ZIP code fields with their specifications
for numeric contents and a separate field for Canadian Postal codes ( ANA
NAN ), e.g., H0H 0H0 ( yes, it's used by Canada Post for mail to Santa ).

Personally, I would not be inclined to use the telephone country code -
Canada and the US may put their postal codes in the same general location
but, as noted, the patterns are not at all similar.  Rather, I suggest
considering the use of the two character international country codes for
Internet addresses.

To avoid one possible source of confusion one must be very clear that "ca"
is the code for Canada whilst "CA" in a State/Province field is the code for
the State of California.

Another area of interest are the upper case characters used by the European
postal services which often are prefixed to their postal city codes, e.g.,
CH 1860 Aigle, VD, Suisse.  I believe the codes used are the same as for
their automobile license plates ( could be wrong here ).

Ah yes, don't forget to make allowance for language specific spellings -
unless it is firmly decided that ALL correspondence will originate within
the USA.

Another advantage of using the two lower-case character codes as a country
identifier is that data entry screens and filters could be configured to aid
data entry.  In Canada, and I must believe, in the US, address accuracy
rates affect postal rates for bulk mailings.

All in all, fascinating subject and related projects.

Georges
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