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copied!<p>Another possible solution (assuming you actually need reliable address data and you're not just using addresses as a way to prevent duplicate accounts) is to use a third-party web service to standardize the addresses provided by your users. </p> <p>It works this way -- your system accepts a user's address via an online form. Your form hands off the user's address to the third-party address standardization web service. The web service gives you back the same address but now with the data standardized into discrete address fields, and with the standard abbreviations and formats applied. Your application displays this standardized address to your user for their confirmation before attempting to save the data in your DB.</p> <p>If all the user addresses go through a standardization step and only standardized addresses are saved to your DB, then finding duplicate records should be greatly simplified since you are now comparing apples to apples.</p> <p>One such third-party service is <a href="http://www.globaladdress.net/?pn=globaladdressinteractive" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Global Address's Interactive Service</a> which includes Germany in the list of supported countries, and also has an online demo that demonstrates how their service works (demo link can be found on that web page).</p> <p>There's a cost disadvantage to this approach, obviously. However, on the plus side:</p> <ol> <li>you would not need to create and maintain your own address standardization metadata</li> <li>you won't need to continuously enhance your address standardization routines, and</li> <li>you're free to focus your software development energy on the parts of the application that are unique to your requirements </li> </ol> <p>Disclaimer: I don't work for Global Address and have not tried using their service. I'm merely mentioning them as an example since they have an online demo that you can actually play with.</p>

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