[AccessD] Zip+4?

William,

Correctly handling the postal services requirements is a non-trivial task.  The process is called 
CASS and NCOA.  CASS stands for Coding Accuracy Support System.

http://www.nextmark.com/glossary/definition.jsp?glossaryTermId=a0800000000EqQrAAK

What is essentially does is to verify the addresses against USPS supplied database (which changes 
quarterly), and if a given address passes CASS it means that the address represents an actual 
deliverable address.

NCOA stands for National Change of Address, and it has its own requirements but in general the USPS 
wants all addresses CASSed and NCOAed no more than 90 days before use to qualify for bulk mail 
discounts and such.

NCOA states that a specific person moved (no longer lives at the previous address) and may / may not 
supply the current address.  NCOA is a much more nebulous thing than CASS simply because people may 
or may not live at an address at all, may have moved and not filed a COA, may have lived there but 
moved years ago etc.

I am heavily involved in CASS / NCOA, and in fact I am able to provide such processing if desired.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


William Hindman wrote:
> Group
> 
> I use a separate tblGeo table to manage 
> city/state/post/country/region/timezone/dst/lat/long data with an fk join on 
> tblOrgAddress.
> This is presented as an enforced combo with any new org address entry, thus 
> ensuring that only valid entries are allowed for that data.
> When US zip codes were only 5 digits, this worked quite well ...but the 
> growing number of +4 zips is beginning to grow out of control ...adding the 
> +4 means an additional 10k entries per US post code are possible ...which 
> would drive the db to its knees.
> 
> So I've separated out the +4 and isolated them in the tblOrgAddress to limit 
> the impact on lookups and just concatenate them when I assemble addresses. 
> This is of course time and code intensive in its own right but limited to 
> only those times when a full mailing address is required.
> 
> The problem comes in requiring data entry people to enter the +4 separate 
> from the post code ...it just isn't getting done ...and the client is now 
> seeing address rejections from the postal service bulk mailing because the 
> +4 is missing.
> 
> Question is, does anyone have a better way of handling the zip+4 issue?
> 
> William
>  
> 
>