Do you have anything like KLADR in your country?

[onodera]

KLADR is a publicly accessible list of all addresses in Russia. This means you can take any address, like "1 Red Square, Moscow" or "the garage of the cement plant 11 km from Kirovograd", including outdated ones and
a) verify that it exists and is up-to-date (so you don't send your mail to Stalingrad)
b) store the address as an unambiguous short numeric code.
A postal extension allows you to enumerate over every single apartment and office, but you have to be a postal worker to get it.

Do you have anything like that in your own country? Also, where can I download it, then?

[Q Classic]

Doesn't Google Maps or Live Maps do #1?

[-Jrabbit]

where "a" = 1...

Though I don't think Google makes any pretense to being either comprehensive or up to date.

[Lorizael]

There's always USPS.

[Blaupanzer]

Actually Google is up-to-date as within 24 hours except for weekends for all addresses in the continental US. They seem pretty up to date for Mexico, Canada, Alaska, and Hawaii too, but I've not seem any claims as to how up-to-date. Using the satellite version, you can verify in reasonably hi-def what is located at a given address and you can determine the address of almost any legal commerce location. You can save the address, naming it anything you want, which might be the same as the "b" in your message, Onodera.

[Blaupanzer]

As to obsolete addresses -- "the street used to be named Confederate Road" or a changed city name, I suspect you will stump any US mapping system by looking for the old name. Even the USPS loses track of subdivided or joined ZIP code areas and can't tell you what the area looked like exactly before the most recent change. Supposedly this stuff is on record down to the 4-digit code for each address when in one zip code and its new 4 digit code in the transformed zip code. I wouldn't make any serious bets on getting the USPS to come up with the previouss stuff quickly or easily.

[Blaupanzer]

Dp

[Combat Ingrid]

Do you have anything like that in your own country? Also, where can I download it, then?

None of your business, you god damn Russian. Stop spying on us!

[Sirotnikov]

no numeric codes, but i don't know how sending info to certain apartments or offices is revolutionary

[snoopy369]

Businesses use the NCOA database, maintained by the USPS, to update mailing information based on people moving, deaths, people in jail, etc... various services (for example, Anchor Computers) will perform lookups for a fee.

[Patroklos]

a) verify that it exists and is up-to-date (so you don't send your mail to Stalingrad)

You can send mail into the past!?! Sweet, I have some lottery numbers and stock trade tickers to send to myself.

[onodera]

Businesses use the NCOA database, maintained by the USPS, to update mailing information based on people moving, deaths, people in jail, etc... various services (for example, Anchor Computers) will perform lookups for a fee.

It's a bit different. KLADR doesn't track people's addresse, it just tracks the locations themselves.

[Blaupanzer]

Google does what you say KLADR does, except for the historical translations. It also shows you a satellite image of the place in question in sufficient detail to distinguish building- and car-types, as well as people and small animals. I don't know if Google is available in Russia, but I'm sure they'd like to be.

[snoopy369]

It's a bit different. KLADR doesn't track people's addresse, it just tracks the locations themselves.

I'm not entirely sure what value that has except to historians... in business you care about people (or, businesses) rather than buildings typically.

[Blaupanzer]

Google Maps also tracks addresses, i.e., buildings or locations, not occupants.