FAQs

FAQs#

Service Speeds#

What can affect speeds from Global Address Web Service?#

  • The location of the client server. The distance between our server to yours will make a difference in overall speed. See here for our current server location list: https://www.melissa.com/company/server-locations-uptime

  • The current load of our public cloud servers. We maintain and make available a large amount of processing capacity. However, all things being equal, the more usage at any given time will decrease overall speed during that time.

  • The protocol used. We have seen SOAP be up to 10% slower than XML or JSON.

  • Real time vs batch. Real time means sending one record at a time, while for batch you will send up to 100 records at a time and loop through your data. Processing 100 at a time will increase your overall per address speed by up to 25%-50%.

  • The country of the input. This is one of the most important factors as each country has its own engine in the background and its own verification paths and algorithms. A well-structured country like the US will be much faster than a less structured one like India. Also, a Latin-based address system will usually be faster than a non-Latin system.

  • The quality of the address. A good address will be faster than a bad or partially bad address. Bad addresses will require extra steps, additional fuzzy matching logic, and extra parses before we either find a match or give up.

Throughput Speeds#

When to use real-time vs. batch processing#

  • Real-Time (Single Request)

    • Customer onboarding

    • CRM data entry

    • Checkout or form entry

  • Batch

    • Processing a spreadsheet or database

    • Processing historical data

    • Scheduled processing

    • ETL transformations

What speeds can you expect?#

Real-Time Speeds#

Response times can vary, but the majority of requests should fall between:

  • 30ms - 150ms for Latin Based Countries

  • 50ms - 500ms for Non-Latin Based Countries

Batch Speeds#
Single-Threaded#

A single-threaded batch process is recommended when:

  • Fast development is a priority.

  • Processing small to medium-sized lists (1,000 - 100,000 records).

Expected processing speed is 100,000 - 400,000 records per hour.

Multi-Threaded#

Multi-threading involves sending multiple requests to the web server simultaneously and handling responses as they are returned. This approach can significantly improve performance by reducing the overall time required for processing.

A multi-threaded batch process is recommended when:

  • Processing large volumes of records quickly.

  • Handling large lists (100,000+ records).

We recommend starting with 5-10 threads to avoid rate limiting errors.

Expected processing speed is 300,000 – 800,00 records per hour.

Note

A single-threaded process remains a viable option for processing larger lists, though it may take longer compared to a multi-threaded approach.

Scaling and Rate Limiting#

Melissa utilizes dynamic scaling to improve throughput speeds during peak usage periods. This behavior ensures that our web services can adjust to changes in traffic and consistently provide optimal performance regardless of demand.

To maintain service stability and prevent excessive load, Melissa enforces rate limiting based on request volume and frequency. For more information, please refer to our rate limiting page: Rate Limiting.

Pros and Cons#

What are the Pros and Cons of using Global Address Public Cloud vs On-Premise?#

In terms of the global address verification functionality, the Public Cloud and the On-Premise both will product the same verification results. Our public cloud offer is after all simply a web application layer built on top of the On-Premise API. You will receive the same global coverage regardless of which one you pick. The main reasons for picking one or the other are due to architectural as well as organization policy reasons.

Public Cloud

On-Premise

Privacy and Security

Data is hosted on Melissa servers in a secure and private environment. We undergo security audits like SOC2 and no PII data is stored.

The most private and secure option. The Global Address library and data files are located on your own servers and nothing leaves your network.

Maintenance

Start verifying addresses with no setup or installation. No maintenance of servers or data updates to worry about.

Updates provided on a quarterly basis that will need to be updated on all machines hosting the on-premise product. Install is included or simply use a copy/replace operation.

Pricing

Transactional Pricing. Best and cheapest way to get started and only pay for exactly what you use.

Bulk pricing. We are required to charge bulk pricing for putting data on premise. Most cost efficient for high volumes.

Ease of Use

Ready to use web application that supports REST/XML/JSON/SOAP on a globally hosted redundant infrastructure.

API for use in a programming language like Java/Python/.NET, etc. A low-level API that can be integrated to exactly your needs, but is not a ready to go web service like Public Cloud.

Global Address Information Types#

What type of global address information can I send?#

Global Address is designed to take full standard addresses. This means that the address must, in most cases, have a house number, a street (or thoroughfare) and identifiable area data (like postal code and locality). The service will not behave particularly well for partial addresses, point of interest information (like a park or plot of land without a formal address), Directions (e.g. “across the street from ABC Bank”) or non-address information (like phone numbers). The reason for this is that address verification relies on having a good address data source behind it in order to confirm its validity, and non-formal address data is not good enough to power our verification solution.

Minimum Required Input#

What are the minimum input fields required?#

The only field that is really required is the country input. We cannot verify an address without a country. Secondly, almost all addresses must effectively have an AddressLine input. While it is theoretically possible to verify an address with a very unique piece of information like a postal code in certain countries and areas, that is very rare.

Input Data Format#

How should I send in my address input data?#

Your input address can be sent in a number of ways. Our main advice is to try and send the data you have with as little manipulation as possible if you have a full address. The most common ways to send it are:

  1. Full address in the AddressLines:

    AddressLine1: 22382 Avenida Empresa
AddressLine2: Rancho Santa Margarita CA, 92688
Ctry: US

  2. Full address in the AddressLines + Parsed Area:

    AddressLine1: 22382 Avenida Empresa
Locality: Rancho Santa Margarita
AdministrativeArea: CA
PostalCode: 92688
Ctry: US

    Note: What you want to avoid as much as possible is sending in duplicated information, like this BAD example below:

    AddressLine1: 22382 Avenida Empresa
AddressLine2: Rancho Santa Margarita CA, 92688
Locality: Rancho Santa Margarita
AdministrativeArea: CA
PostalCode: 92688
Ctry: US

Encoding Type#

What encoding does Global Address use?#

Global Address uses UTF-8 Unicode encoding. It is very important to make sure your data is in UTF-8 when sending to our service, especially for non-Latin countries. Be on the lookup for question marks (?), squares (▖) or other weird characters like �. They may be an indication of encoding issues and may result in data loss.

Address Verification Levels#

Why are there different levels of Address Verification Result Codes?#

The address source data that is available to use as part of our Address validation product can differ from country to country. For most developed countries with a major postal agency like the United States, Great Britain, France, etc, we will have delivery point data available. However, there may be countries where that detailed data is not available, or simply does not exist. In those cases, we will use less detailed information. Here is an overview and inside peak of the types of data available:

  • Delivery Point Data

    Source: 1 Main St Apartment 12, Anytown 12345, USA Max Verification Level: AV25

  • Range Data

    Source: 100-200 Main St, Anytown 12345, USA Max Verification Level: AV24

  • Thoroughfare Data

    Source: Main St, Anytown 12345, USA Max Verification Level: AV23

  • Locality Data

    Source: Anytown 12345, USA Max Verification Level: AV22

Script Handling#

How does the Global Address engine handle different Scripts?#

Global Address has an option called OutputScript that has 3 possible values:

Value

Definition

NoChange

We will detect the script of the input and leave output in that same script.

Latn

We will change the output to Latin on output.

Native

We will change the output to the native script of the country (Like Cyrillic for Russia)

Here are some things to make note of when trying to understand this functionality.

Global Address essentially supports up to two scripts per country. Latin and if the country uses a language that is not Latin based, we convert to that language if Native is set. Note that Script and Language are not the same. English, Spanish, French are all Latin Script even if their alphabet and diacritics used are slightly different. We can only change scripts for a record if we are able to verify and validate the address. For Latin based languages, if you specify OutputScript=Latn, we will also remove the diacritics (Gjøvik vs Gjovik)

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