In the 80's I made a database routine to do just this - take a zip and turn it into a city - and as well, to go the other direction. I sold it to another software company for a rather fat amount of cash, and they used it to make their production-line data entry 80% faster. In the cases where it failed and produced wrong results, it was cheaper for them to ship me the dud records for correction in the database than it was to go back to the old way.
Yet still, today, its a very rarely encountered technique. I wonder if so much has changed in the Zip+4 world to make it an efficiency sink...
I wouldn't personally trust whatever service provides this lookup to be 100% accurate, especially because there's so many weird edge cases with addresses. If the user gets it wrong, at least it's their fault and not mine.
fit2rule|7 years ago
Yet still, today, its a very rarely encountered technique. I wonder if so much has changed in the Zip+4 world to make it an efficiency sink...
whamlastxmas|7 years ago