Re: [Gnumed-devel] new find_or_create urb and state

[Horst Herb]

On Sat, 27 Apr 2002 19:54, syan tan wrote:
> these functions can make the address database have less integrity than
> necessary. If a complete postcode database is available for a country,
> as in the australia post database, it isn't necessary to try to create
> a suburb or a state. When the person details ui was working before the

The catch is in the "...if a _complete_ ..." - which is not. The database 
lists every urb with it's own postcode, but not every urb. Some towns 
share a postcode, and only ONE of these little towns will show up in the 
database. We had this problem with a few small farming towns in the Cohuna 
area.
Thus, we need the function. We also need it as we will always get tourists 
or people with a residence outside the country we practice in - they also 
have an address not existing in the database


> complementary field. By introducing a find or create function for the
> urb and the state fields, a synonym problem can develop where a
> misspelling or alternate spelling of a name or a different abbreviation
> can lead to multiple entries for the same meaning e.g. Vic and Victoria:

You are right here, but I haven't got a smart answer for this. Maybe we 
should prompt the user when 
a) a postcode is given , but no town
b) a postcode is given, but the town name does not match the one in the 
database
and write a little fault tolerant searching algorithm (unfortunatley, the 
standard soundex algorithms do not work at all with typical Australian urb 
names) to automatically iron out common typos

> the find or create street makes sense because there is no complete
> database available for streets in all suburbs of Australia, but it still
> suffers from a synonym problem anyway.

Yes, it does. Possible solution as outlined above, and I am all ears for 
better solutions

Horst