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Glossary #

These are common words you’ll see when dealing with GeoCoder Object.

CBSA - “Core Based Statistical Area”. This is a collective term for both metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, which are geographic entities defined by the OMB (U.S. Office of Management and Budget). These are for use by Federal statistical agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing Federal statistics. A metro area has a core urban area of 50,000 or more population with a micro area containing a core urban area of at least 10,000 population but less than 50,000 population. Each of these areas contain at least one county, including the core urban area and any adjacent counties with a high degree of social and economic integration, as measured by commuting to work.
Interpolated Rooftop - These coordinates were computed using mathematical algorithms and street shape maps. While these coordinates are educated estimates, they should be quite accurate for the majority of the United States. There may be cases where the location of interpolated points is not very near the actual residence, mostly in rural areas with long streets and non-standard house numbering. However, these coordinates are still much more accurate than ZIP + 4 coordinates.
Latitude - The geographic coordinate of a point measured in degrees north or south of the equator. The GeoCoder Object uses the WGS-84 standard for determining latitude.
License - This is the license key provided to you by your Melissa representative. It is required for the object to work.
Longitude - The geographic coordinate of a point measured in degrees east or west of the Greenwich meridian. The GeoCoder Object uses the WGS-84 standard for determining longitude.
MAK - Melissa Address Key. This is a globally unique and persistent key for the location, even if parts of the address change. When an address is fully validated this field returns a 10-digit proprietary key for the address. With AddressKey (US and Canada only), if an address ZIP Code™ changes, the AddressKey would also change. MAK is independent and will not change. This makes MAK a good way to permanently identify and locate addresses. Once you have a MAK it can be used as an input in most Melissa services and thus is a good tool for deduping.
Result Codes - Each record in the response has a results field that contains a series of result codes that carry a tremendous amount of information about the output. The result codes are delimited by commas. One way we recommend using result codes is as a filter between good and bad records. Determine which codes indicate a good record for your purposes and then filter out all the records that are returned without those codes. A good simple example would be if good records are those that return an AS01, AS02, or AS03 code (these codes generally indicate a valid address record). When you process a number of records through the service you can then parse the output and filter out all of the records that do not return one of those codes in the results field.
Rooftop - These are the most accurate latitude and longitude available with coverage of approximately 105 million individual addresses.
ZIP Code™ - Zone Improvement Plan Code. ZIP Code™s designate delivery routes and areas. There are three main parts of the 5-digit ZIP Code™—the national area, the region or city, and the delivery area.
ZIP+4® - In 1983 the USPS® changed its ZIP Code™ system to include the new ZIP+4®. A ZIP+4® Code uses the basic five-digit code plus four additional digits to identify a small delivery segment such as a street, a city block, a group of apartments, or even an individual address that receives a high volume of mail. The ZIP+4® Code is not required and is usually calculated automatically when the mail is sorted and processed.