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Clarity
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ACProctor
ACProctor
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As others have pointed out, there is a no specific standard in this area. While most products and people acknowledge the use of a hierarchical description, there is no agreement, or any standards, on what the hierarchical levels should represent. The administrative divisions within one country will differ to another. Even the US has its complications such as being composed of 50 states PLUS one federal district.

In fact, the visible representation of the hierarchy itself will be locale-dependent since not every country will expect it to be arranged small-to-large and using a comma separator. In principle, there should be a difference between how the hierarchy is represented in the data (i.e. a linked list of entities) and how they're depicted on the screen or in a report, but this is going to be dependent on the software product you're using.

As Adrian points out, the terms place, location, and address are not clearly defined. Although there are people who will insist they are distinct (myself included), there is no "controlled vocabulary" in our field.

The loss of a pair of commas is unfortunate. I'm sure you've thought about inserting a place-marker such as "UNKNOWN" into the hierarchy. This would stop your software losing an unknown entry but it may not transport well because someone else might use a different marker. I would personally avoid a specific word since it would only have meaning in a particular language, and might even be ambiguous in a different language. Although I haven't tried it personally, have you tried using a simple question mark ("?") as a place-marker?

As others have pointed out, there is a no specific standard in this area. While most products and people acknowledge the use of a hierarchical description, there is no agreement, or any standards, on what the hierarchical levels should represent. The administrative divisions within one country will differ to another. Even the US has its complications such as being composed of 50 states PLUS one federal district.

In fact, the representation of the hierarchy itself will be locale-dependent since not every country will expect it to be arranged small-to-large and using a comma separator. In principle, there should be a difference between how the hierarchy is represented in the data (i.e. a linked list of entities) and how they're depicted on the screen or in a report, but this is going to be dependent on the software product you're using.

As Adrian points out, the terms place, location, and address are not clearly defined. Although there are people who will insist they are distinct (myself included), there is no "controlled vocabulary" in our field.

The loss of a pair of commas is unfortunate. I'm sure you've thought about inserting a place-marker such as "UNKNOWN" into the hierarchy. This would stop your software losing an unknown entry but it may not transport well because someone else might use a different marker. I would personally avoid a specific word since it would only have meaning in a particular language, and might even be ambiguous in a different language. Although I haven't tried it personally, have you tried using a simple question mark ("?") as a place-marker?

As others have pointed out, there is a no specific standard in this area. While most products and people acknowledge the use of a hierarchical description, there is no agreement, or any standards, on what the hierarchical levels should represent. The administrative divisions within one country will differ to another. Even the US has its complications such as being composed of 50 states PLUS one federal district.

In fact, the visible representation of the hierarchy itself will be locale-dependent since not every country will expect it to be arranged small-to-large and using a comma separator. In principle, there should be a difference between how the hierarchy is represented in the data (i.e. a linked list of entities) and how they're depicted on the screen or in a report, but this is going to be dependent on the software product you're using.

As Adrian points out, the terms place, location, and address are not clearly defined. Although there are people who will insist they are distinct (myself included), there is no "controlled vocabulary" in our field.

The loss of a pair of commas is unfortunate. I'm sure you've thought about inserting a place-marker such as "UNKNOWN" into the hierarchy. This would stop your software losing an unknown entry but it may not transport well because someone else might use a different marker. I would personally avoid a specific word since it would only have meaning in a particular language, and might even be ambiguous in a different language. Although I haven't tried it personally, have you tried using a simple question mark ("?") as a place-marker?

Source Link
ACProctor
ACProctor
  • 5.9k
  • 21
  • 37

As others have pointed out, there is a no specific standard in this area. While most products and people acknowledge the use of a hierarchical description, there is no agreement, or any standards, on what the hierarchical levels should represent. The administrative divisions within one country will differ to another. Even the US has its complications such as being composed of 50 states PLUS one federal district.

In fact, the representation of the hierarchy itself will be locale-dependent since not every country will expect it to be arranged small-to-large and using a comma separator. In principle, there should be a difference between how the hierarchy is represented in the data (i.e. a linked list of entities) and how they're depicted on the screen or in a report, but this is going to be dependent on the software product you're using.

As Adrian points out, the terms place, location, and address are not clearly defined. Although there are people who will insist they are distinct (myself included), there is no "controlled vocabulary" in our field.

The loss of a pair of commas is unfortunate. I'm sure you've thought about inserting a place-marker such as "UNKNOWN" into the hierarchy. This would stop your software losing an unknown entry but it may not transport well because someone else might use a different marker. I would personally avoid a specific word since it would only have meaning in a particular language, and might even be ambiguous in a different language. Although I haven't tried it personally, have you tried using a simple question mark ("?") as a place-marker?