Express Entry:FAQ

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In the Fielded Input example or the sales demo page, my address A is in city B. Why does A appear also in city C?

Due to the presence of non-official cities (vanity names), Fielded Input is set up not to pass the city name. This means that your address, after selecting the ZIP code, may appear to be in both cities B and C if you test the data. Fielded Input is set up to search the ZIP Code, not the city, for a given address.

Why is the city returned different than expected?

In Free Form Entry, only the official U.S. Postal Service deliverable city names show up in a given ZIP code. This means that when entering an address, you may be given a city different than your expected city. Because of the way standardization is for addresses within the United States Postal Service and the data, the address that Express Entry returns is actually the official deliverable city for that ZIP code. Deliverability is not affected by the city being different than expected in this case.

What are the requirements for Express Entry?

Express Entry consists of a web service which is accessed by your client. The client code can be any language that supports REST or JSONP queries and XML or JSON responses.

Sample code is available in C#.NET, Visual BASIC.NET, and JavaScript/JQuery.

How does Express Entry work?

The client code forms a secure query in REST (the Web standard.) For example:

https://expressentry.melissadata.net/web/ExpressAddress?id=[LicenseKey]&maxrecords=10&format=XML&line1=9000+R

This consumes (receives) the completed information via XML or JSON. Using the Visual Studio libraries, parsing XML is simple – just search for the desired node using a string and traverse the siblings (see samples).

How many keystrokes can I expect to save?

With Express Entry, you can expect to cut your keystrokes in half.

Abbreviations

Addresses in Express Entry have certain rules about abbreviations. Express Entry has abbreviations for words in addresses, always uses those abbreviations, and the user must be aware of when to use them or a match will not occur. For instance in the address, ‘1001 E 20th Ave’, one can see the predirectional, ‘E’, is abbreviated from ‘East’, the ordinal street name ‘20th’ is abbreviated from ‘Twentieth’, and suffix ‘Ave’ is abbreviated from ‘Avenue.’ Any other representation of this address will not be in Express Entry Data. Postdirectionals are abbreviated as well, such as the ‘N’ in ‘US Highway 27 N’. Note that in this case ‘Highway’ is not abbreviated ‘Hwy’ as in other addresses, due to it being part of the street name and not an ordinal. By following these guidelines, one can produce more matches within Express Entry.

I found an address that is not in the system. What should I do?

Your code will need to support the entry of the full address if it is not found in the database.