Before building the Job and Definition Files:
- Assess the format and level of detail in your address file. You must know the format of your address file in order to create or edit a Definition File. You will need to identify the position and length of each address line or component that is used as input to the driver. For information on address component fields, refer to "Using the Structures and Constants" in your Finalist Reference Guide. Refer to Definition File for a description of keywords that can be used within the Definition File.
-
Use the information in "Using the Structures and
Constants" in your Finalist Reference Guide as a checklist. Write down the position
and length of address fields on the input record.
Ideally, your data file will contain all of the fields listed in "Using the Structures and Constants" in your Finalist Reference Guide. To optimize the benefits of OVERLAY processing, it is important to have as many address components available as possible. Detailed address information enables the driver to process and update address fields in the file and eliminates the need for post-processing of the output. Note that the driver can only update the fields that are defined in the Definition File when using the jOverlay option. If your file does not contain the necessary level of detail, you can overlay the components that you have identified in the Definition File, and direct returned address data to a separate file.
If your input file does not contain detailed address components at specific offsets and instead has blocks of address data (for example, city, state and ZIP Code at a specific offset), you can still set up a Definition File to handle the data using block-style keywords in the Definition File.
Consider reformatting your input file to attain a higher level of detail. You can achieve this by using block-style addressing for a single execution of the driver, building new, more detailed data records using the output from the previous run, and then running the driver a second time on the more detailed data. After reformatting the data, a new Job and Definition file should be created to use the new fields. You can then use overlay processing option to update the data in place.
Note: It is strongly recommended that you create a backup copy of your data before performing OVERLAY processing on your file for the first time.