Royal Mail Postcode File
Motorola Phone Tools V2351. Accessing the highly accurate address and Postcode information in Royal Mail's Postcode Address File (PAF) helps organisations: Provide a more efficient and professional service to customers; Convert more online sales and reduce the risk of fraud; Optimise planning and resource allocation; Save time and money.
The Royal Mail 4-State Barcode, or RM4SCC, is the barcode used for automated mail sorting and addressing in England and the UK. The most accurate, up-to-date UK address database. The Postcode Address File®, or PAF, puts the latest, most accurate UK address data at your disposal. PAF - the Postcode Address File – gives you access to 1.8 million UK postcodes and over 29 million residential and business. Accessing the highly accurate address and Postcode information in Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF) helps organisations: Provide a more efficient and.
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I'm struggling to understand what you would get from the Royal Mail if you bought their PAF file dataset of UK addresses. I was expecting that PAF was some form of database which you would host yourself, and the Royal Mail provide APIs into that database. However, after reading, I'm presuming that all you get is a series of files containing the data. I can't find any obvious information regarding an API. • Are there any libraries available to help you handle these files, especially from Java? • Do you have to parse the file yourself and stick it in your own database, so you can do quick lookups from an application? • If all this is true, why would you ever bother buying this off the Royal Mail?
Aren't all the third party providers, with their web based APIs, just far simpler to use - in terms of both programming and data maintenance? Apologies if I've missed the obvious on this one, but I find the Royal Mail site lacking in information. I'm beginning to think that I've misunderstood their PAF file offering. The postcode address file (PAF) is a set of data-files provided by Royal Mail that contain all address in the UK.
My understanding is that it's normally updated every three months. I'm aware of two companies that have products that supply APIs into the PAF data: QAS and Capscan.
With these you're able to search addresses to find missing postcodes or vice versa. APIs include both web-based solutions and native calls. Why you'd buy direct from Royal Mail? Because you'd want to write your own query tools rather rely on third party products or you want to do data-mining that other products can't provide. Could you import into a SQL database? Yes, but only after you'd written your own PAF file parser. Why use these over web-based tools?
Because you're sitting behind an intranet, have limited internet access from servers, restrictive licensing from any web-based solution, etc. I've subsequently found page where you can order a sample data set. It states: Please be aware that Raw Data contains no software and the data must be processed for use in IT applications. If you do not wish to program PAF or Postzon then we can supply it to you in a pre-written application known as The UK Addresses on CD page goes on about something called 'UK Addresses Utilities', and it states: The UK Addresses CD also contains a set of dynamic link libraries and provides the ability to interrogate the address datasets programmatically through a.NET 2.0(+) DLL.