The Country Rules Table (rtrules2.win/unx
) defines rules that apply to all countries and specific countries. The organization of parameters in the table indicates the country to which a parameter value applies.
Parameter |
Description |
---|---|
ADD_ENDING |
Allows you to define endings of words that indicate the data is from a particular country. These are added to the same lookup table as entries in the Global Geography Table that start with a ‘-‘. If one is found, the WEIGHT_FOUND_ENDINGS value is added. Example:
If the ending "shire" is found, a weight of 50 is added. |
ADDITIONAL_WEIGHT |
Assigns additional weight to a particular word. This is useful if the same city appears in multiple countries, and current rules keep assigning the record to the wrong country. In this example, "Barcelona" is a major city in Spain, but a minor name in the UK. This can ensure it goes to Spain, if there is more than one possibility.
Example: |
ALIAS |
Tries different variations of a particular word. If one of them is matched, the program tries substituting all other entries when looking up the string in the Global Geography Table. The number of entries in the alias list indicates how many attempts would be made to find the maximum value of the weight for a particular record. This is useful in a country such as Portugal, where the name of the city might have one variation, but the data was entered with another. For instance, the city "Aguiar da Beira", if entered as "Aguiar de Beira", would still be found. An alias must start and end with a space or a hyphen.
Example:
|
AUXILIARY_CITY_FILE_NAME |
Indicates the name of the xxAUXCIT file, which contains city, state, and zipcode information that the router uses to get more accurate routing.
Example: |
COUNTRY |
Two-letter code defined by the user to identify the matched country. This parameter is REQUIRED. Each time it is used, all successive parameters in the "parameter block" will be associated with this country, until the next COUNTRY parameter is found.
Example: |
COUNTRY_CODE |
Client-specific value representing the country (expected values in COUNTRY_CODE_FIELD). This parameter inserts the character string that is used internationally to identify this country. The position of the country code on the record is defined by the schema (DDL/DDX). If found, the value defined in WEIGHT_COUNTRY_CODE is added to the total weight. Example: COUNTRY_CODE usa WEIGHT_COUNTRY_CODE 50 If "usa" is found, a weight of 50 is added. |
COUNTRY_NAME |
If name(s) listed here are found, the WEIGHT_COUNTRY_NAME value is applied. If the full country name is found anywhere in the record, under one of the following conditions:
then the WEIGHT_COUNTRY_NAME value is added to the total. If a country is likely to occur in the data, then it is best to set this to 0 (zero). For example, if "Canada" is likely to be a street name in the country of that name, set it to 0 (zero). You can have multiple names for the country if there are multiple languages within the country.
Example: |
COUNTY_PREFIX |
Contains county prefix name(s). In some places, the Global Geography Table has the state names entered as counties, with the word "County" in the table. Often, the data will not contain this word. This allows for a match even if the word is not present. For example, in Ireland, the city of Sutton is in County Dublin. However, data may come in as "Sutton Dublin", and not as "Sutton County Dublin".
Example: |
GEOG_CITY_CHG_ RECODE |
When a match is made between a city name on the input data and a city-change entry in the Global Geography Table, the recoded city name from the table entry will be used. This parameter turns off this service so that the original city name remains on the record.
Example: |
GEOG_PREFIX |
Extracts entries from the Global Geography Table, removes prefixes and creates a lookup table entry that would change data into the full name with the prefix. Example: In Canada, there are cities with French names beginning with L’, such as L’Ardoise. Sometimes the prefix is not included. By defining a list of prefixes and creating the prefix table, the program automatically converts Ardoise into L’Ardoise, and matches it to the Global Geography Table entry. If there are multiple entries, they are separated with commas.
Here, the prefix "de" includes a space. That means that the program would find any usage of this without the space. So if the Global Geography Table contained "DE WINTON", the program would match up with "DEWINTON" in the data, but not with "WINTON". If the Global Geography Table contained "L’ARDOISE", the program would match up with "ARDOISE" in the data. If there is a space, the program drops it and attempts a match. If there is no space, it drops the whole prefix to attempt a match. If "de" is added and then the entire phrase is looked up, it would find "DE LERY" before "LERY". Both are city names in Canada, but LERY is in New Brunswick, and DE LERY is in Quebec. |
IGNORE_CITY_NAME |
Allows you to add words that will not be considered city names, unless there is a supporting postal code or state name. A good example is the Brazilian section of the Global Geography Table which has cities named "De" and "Rua". These are common words in street addresses in this country.
Example: |
IGNORE_RECODES_LESS_THAN |
The recode will be ignored if it is less than the number of characters you specify. For example, if you specify 3, it ignores 2 character recodes such as 'LA' to 'LAKE.'
Example:
|
INPUT_ENCODING |
This is used for different countries, so that any parameter values for that country can be entered using the code page for that country. This must be entered before any tables for that country. It is best to put it right after the COUNTRY parameter. |
MATCH_HYPHEN_ SPACE |
When set to Y, this parameter allows a match between a data entry that has been entered in the Global Geography Table with hyphens, and a data entry that has spaces (as well as the reverse scenario).
Example: If the Global Geography Table contains "VILLARS-SUR-GLANE", the string "Villars Sur Glane" will match it. This eliminates many table recodes. |
POSTCODE_MASK |
Specifies the position and shape of the postal code in the record. If the program finds a city or state name, but cannot find an exact match on the postal code, then it looks in the position defined by this parameter to check if the word there has the designated shape. This parameter overrides the position part of the POSTCODE_FIELD values. You can have multiple masks separated by a comma. Format: Position, Value Position: LC - left of the city RC - right of the city LS - left of the state RS - right of the state Mask: N - numeric A - alphabet
Example:
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REAL_COUNTRY_NAME |
This parameter is for countries that have two versions of country templates, native encoding (double byte) and Latin-1 (single byte). If specified, the real country name will be stored in the SAVE_COUNTRY_FIELD. For example, for Greece, GR is the country code for the native encoding and G1 is for Latin-1. If you want to process the Latin-1 records but you want the country code GR, use this parameter.
Example:
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RECODE |
This parameter acts like a recode parameter in the Global Geography Table. If the program finds the first value, it changes it to the second.
Example: If ‘S’ is found, it is changed to ‘Santa’. |
SPACE_AFTER_PERIOD |
If Y, then this parameter inserts a space, prior to matching the string to the lookup tables, if the program encounters a period in the text and the next character is not a space. This allows text such as "S.Diego" to convert to "S. Diego". If "S." is recoded to "San", then the program gets a match in the Global Geography Table.
Example: |
STATE_ENDING |
This allows a match if all the characters at the end of a word match up to the ending specified here.
Example: Useful in the UK, where state names might end in "shire", such as "Abdereenshire". |
STATE_LONGNAME |
Contains a table of long names for states. It is not necessary to perform a recode in order to convert the long names into the abbreviations for lookups. Example: STATE_LONGNAME Washington,WA,wash Massachusetts,MA,mass Ontario,ON,ont Certain state names may occur in other places, such as Washington. The program may convert Washington into WA, thus making "Washington DC" into "WA DC" which is not found anywhere. Values contained here will not be converted, only looked up, when trying to find a state match. |
STATE_MATCH |
If the program does not get a full match on a state name, this parameter allows the consideration of a partial match as sufficient. The value entered here is number of characters to match, at the beginning of a state name, to be considered a match.
Example: In this example, if the state was "MASSACHUSETTS", the STATE_MATCH value of 4 would allow for a match on "MASS." |
STATE_POSTCODE_ RANGE |
Contains a list of postal code ranges for a particular country. For example, if you had data from Billerica, and wanted to ensure that it went to the US, you could add a range of postcodes (01820 - 01899). If that post code was contained on the record, additional weight would be assigned during the routing process. Format: STATE_POSTCODE_RANGE <state>, <low_range>, <high_range>
Example: |
TABLE_ENCODING |
This parameter indicates which code page was used to build the tables for a particular country.
Example: |
USE_TRANSLATE_ TABLE |
Invokes the designated translation table.
Example: |
WRITE_NOMATCH |
Allows for country records to be written to the common output file defined in NOMATCH_FNAME, instead of to the file for the identified country. The Router can identify the country of origin but maintain all records in one output file; this is useful if the country can be positively identified, but no parser exists for that country.
Example: |