July 29, 2003 at 7:26 am
This is a nice SP; however, the data appears to be from 1990. There have been a lot of zip code updates since then, so you might want to look into a subscription service.
We subscribe to a service where we get monthly updates. There's a couple changes each month in our subscription. Also, our format includes the streets and county, so you business rules can be accomodated.
July 29, 2003 at 9:09 am
Someone asked the service we use...for the benefit of all, we use CD Light County-Zip DB. They provide several formats, from ASCII, to Access to their own proprietary format that includes DLLs for searching by address, not just zip.
In terms of installation for the DLLs, you have to do a full install. The install is a little confusing, but once you get used to it, it is ok. Make sure you have any services/applications stopped as they lock down the DLLs. This could be a problem for some shops that require very little downtime. One of the dat files is 650 megabytes, so you will be down about 15 minutes each month.
July 30, 2003 at 8:05 am
It was my understanding that the Post Office updated the zipcode file once a quarter, but that's not all you're buying when you get a geo zipcode.
One question...a marketing company I worked for about 5 years ago had the same functionality in some Clipper programs and used a great circle calculation based on POPULATION center, useful in direct marketing (junk mail), based on census data. We found that in rural and suburban zips, this made a huge difference in milage calcs and therefore inclusion lists, as the population tended to be concentrated in smaller areas than in urban zipcodes where it's more evenly spread out.
Since calculation is data-driven, the lat/long in the database, is your data geographical, related to population, economic...?
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at us, very deafly, a most stares
collosal hoax of clocks and calendars
eecummings
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at us, very deafly, a most stares
collosal hoax of clocks and calendars
eecummings
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