A method and system for providing geocodes in response to complete or
partial address information is disclosed. The disclosure teaches
embodiments that are naturally upgraded to integrate changing spatial
information due to addition of countries, better data, political changes,
and other similar changes in geographical data. A single geocoding engine
is capable of handling the various address formats in use in different
countries and jurisdictions. The disclosed embodiments are error tolerant
and capable of overcoming many errors due to spelling, variety of
languages and formats used to provide and address. The diversity in
addresses due to, for instance country-specific formats such as
postal-codes are naturally integrated into existing database of geocoding
information. Preferably, the embodiments are based on JAVA to allow
platform independence and use XML based communication to use networks
without requiring excessive resources while providing fast services.