Chris Travers wrote:
One thing that is remarkably hard to model relationally is address data. In particular different places have different semantics. Some countries have mail codes while some do not. Some places it makes sense to track states and provinces while in some countries this doesn't make sense. And this is not even trying to track things like street addresses in cities like Managua.... So, I am wondering if we should track some additional data in the application. For example, we could track which countries should require states data, or we could simply keep with a minimal of not-null constraints. What do people think?
Since I'm just getting started with LedgerSMB (after years away from SQL-Ledger) I'm not sure what the installation base is nor what is it going to be.
If there is a need to send /reliably/ via. a postal service (or even delivery services) to non North American addresses all the correct pieces needed to do this should be there. Depending on how quickly this needs to be in place (v1.3, v1.4) either a low-hanging fruit approach (less NOT NULL constraints), with a ladder waiting, or just build it with all the right parts which may include less NOT NULL attributes.
I got dragged off to other projects and I haven't had a chance to look at the model so this may be totally off target. At least two tables, the main address table would have the common stuff plus an address type identifier. Other table(s) with address type specific attributes. These might be pretty sparse if all the /other/ address fields are included in one table but there would only be one tuple/row if it is needed for the address.
Of course I may be making this too complicated as my address experience is with bulk mailing, high quality, direct mailed magazines, in the range of 1/4 to 1/2 million every two months.
Rod --
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