[thelist] zip code ?

[martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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Oh boy - this *is* a tough one.

What you're looking at (particularly for the 'nearest-x' lookup) is some
hard
core geo-coding - translating between codes like Zip codes and spatial
orientation and distribution, and doing it internationally is *really* fun
and
interesting.

Some info at:
http://www.ordsvy.gov.uk/gis-files/stage3/page5.htm

You have two choices:
1) Spend a long time developing a system which understands the geography
    well enough to map codes (and do so flexibly to accommodate updates),
and
    then license the data to do it for you
2) Go to someone like QAS and buy a product like
    http://www.qas.com/uk/products/nearest.asp

That's what we're running for our 'Find nearest retail outlet' on
http://www.malts.com/
combined with mapping from http://www.multimap.co.uk

Cheers
Martin



I'm in over my head here...
Here is a record from a mysqldump:
INSERT INTO city VALUES ( '11520', 'Toccopola', '34.25639', '-89.23556',
'31');

The 11520 is an auto-increment but is lacking a zipcode and it has a
stateid (31)

So How do I get a zip code into this database without hand entry?

and what are the implications of the  9 letter zips ...England and
France comes into play in this database?...and search for adjacent
breeders, hunters is why I need the lats/longs




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