[Year 12 IT Apps] database convention - postcodes as a text field in databases

[ATKINSON-BUCK, Damien]

Hi folks,
After many years working on the back-end structures of the white and yellow pages, I can say for a certainty, that they store the postcodes as a text field - and the phone numbers too, in fact virtually everything from the size of the ad (categories) to the street number is stored as text. Again, partly due to the lack of arithmetic needed (the cost of the ad is based on the category, type of listing and a few various other things) and mainly due to the size restrictions. There used to be around 15,000 - 30,000 updates per night, and when each historical transaction is saved for each number, that ends up being petabytes of data VERY quickly.
Cheers
Damien

Damien Atkinson-Buck
Head of Learning Area: Technology/Arts

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From: Mark [mailto:mark at vceit.com]
Sent: Thursday, 30 May 2013 12:03 PM
To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] database convention - postcodes as a text field in databases

But obviously UK postcodes include text characters, so they must be stored as text. This does not apply to Australian postcodes.
I can't remember if the original poster meant to store ANY post/zip code from around the world or not...

On 30 May 2013 09:44, Watson, Donald R <watson.donald.r at edumail.vic.gov.au<mailto:watson.donald.r at edumail.vic.gov.au>> wrote:
Hello All,

The link below pretty much says it all.

The convention is that postcodes should defined and be input as text.
Of course there could be circumstances in which a specialised database might need to use some 'regional intelligence' based on a postcode.

A mail drop to all postcodes between 3850 and 3860 covers my area of Gippsland for example. It saves time on listing 100's of towns in a complicated case or nested if statement.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdom




Don

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