In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dana Hudes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Jan 2005, Scott W Gifford wrote: > > > A private emailer wrote: > > > > [...] > > > > > Even better isn't all this on a USPS server? Whatever tool you use > > > to grab their server database, include it and do that as part of the > > > build process or perhaps offer it as an option , the alternative > > > being to go to the USPS server every time. > > Three things I don't like about that. First, it gives a single point > > of failure for the system, > the alternative is stale data. The USPS server is authoritative. It may be authorative, but it certainly is slow. I would like a data file that I can use without a net connection and for several thousand records. I don't want to make several thousand requests to a web site. > I guess it comes down to how often the ZIP codes change. > I have no idea but of course its less frequent than the registry of .COM . > You can always offer a tool in the scripts/ directory of your code distro > to build the database from the Internet. That addresses your cache issue. The USPS folks offer all the data on CD. Those of us that really care about such things would rather just build it from those files, I think :) In Business::ISBN::Data, I included the script I used to convert the information from the ISBN folks to the data file I needed. Failing that, instructions are the next best thing. -- brian d foy, [EMAIL PROTECTED]