Glossary
Words on the map
A compact lexicon for conversations with vendors, mail houses, and engineering partners. For deeper treatment, see the topic guides.
- Address cleansing
- The broad practice of improving address data quality—parsing, validating, verifying, standardizing, updating, and deduplicating—so records are accurate and usable.
- CASS
- Coding Accuracy Support System. A USPS program that certifies address-matching software and supports accurate ZIP+4 coding for US mail.
- See also: ZIP+4 · DPV
- Delivery Point Validation (DPV)
- A USPS dataset/process confirming whether a specific delivery point (down to the unit, when applicable) is known as a deliverable address.
- See also: CASS
- Geocoding
- Converting an address into geographic coordinates, often with a precision indicator such as rooftop, interpolated, or centroid.
- NCOA / NCOALink
- National Change of Address. USPS-licensed matching that updates records when movers file official change-of-address information.
- Parse
- Breaking a free-text address into structured components such as primary number, street name, suffix, secondary unit, city, region, and postal code.
- Postal code
- A country-defined code that aids sorting and delivery (ZIP in the US, postcode in the UK, and so on).
- Rooftop accuracy
- Geocode precision that aims to place a point on the building or parcel rather than an interpolated street position or area centroid.
- Standardization
- Rewriting address components into a consistent format and abbreviation style for storage, comparison, and printing.
- Validation
- Checking that an address is structurally complete and plausible—necessary components present and formats sensible—without fully proving deliverability.
- Verification
- Confirming an address against authoritative reference data to establish that it exists and is typically deliverable.
- ZIP+4
- An extended US ZIP code adding four digits to refine sorting to a more specific delivery segment.
- See also: CASS