Floor Reference or Flat No
Building Name or House Name
House/Building/Unit Number
Street Name
Through Street
Locality
Town or City
Country
Postcode
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
OK so I didn’t know who he was either until I did a search on simplicity but I wanted to record my best field structure for the storage of addresses which although important is on a par with watching paint dry in terms of excitement. Despite this addresses are central to a heck of a lot of applications so it is important to get it right. This copes with pretty much most addresses. I mainly use locality in larger towns or cities to denote a sub area specifically for users as you can guarantee they will be unfamiliar with the majority of specific street names and particularly for users who are doing business in the same city they are located in it is very useful for them to have a quick understanding of where things are in relation to the assets of the operation involved. Such “context” can be added by using maps but will come for free with intelligent staff if you give them opportunity. I long ago dropped counties and districts but I could see if you were in a larger country such as Russia or America could be useful to note state / oblast etc.. Additionally in the UK town is really postal town – which is often not obvious at all – it can be overkill but you can organise addresses so that postal town is referenced from the town automatically. Probably overkill.
Information on BS7666
National Land and Property Gazeteer