We are always looking to improve our products and would appreciate any feedback from our customers regarding an upcoming change we plan to implement in GeoData. This will affect the State files found in the “TXT” folder.
Currently, GeoData releases include 54 individual *.zip folders for each State or Territory that must be individually extracted before the *.txt file can be imported into the GEODATA header file(s) (*.dbf or *.mdb).
The improvement would combine all 54 files into one single file that supports the whole country.
We are reaching out to discover the following:
- Whether the improvement of consolidating all 54 files into one larger file will be beneficial to our customers or generate any issues.
- How current customers use GeoData.
- Any additional suggestions for improvement.
Please consider taking our short survey to provide valuable feedback regarding any impact this change may have on your team and what may be needed in Geo*Data moving forward.
What is GeoData?
Geo*Data is a geographic database in fixed length (ASCII) format. Geo*Data includes every state within the United States. The ZIP file for the desired state (i.e. CA.ZIP) can be used to add geographic data to a mailing list. GEO*Data also contains ZIP Code and county information.
What does GeoData currently provide?
The “GEODATA” header file includes field names: ZIP Code, Plus4, Latitude, Longitude, Census Tract, Census Block, FIPS Code, Place Code, Congressional District and Lat Level.
There are 54 individual State/Territory .txt files that must be extracted individually and imported into one of the provided GEODATA header tables (.dbf or .mdb).
What would be changing?
We want to combine all 54 *.zip files found in the “TXT” folder into one file that includes the whole country.
Why are we changing it?
This change would mean that our customers will no longer have to individually extract all 54 State/Territory files.
For any questions, please email us at tech@melissa.com or call 1 (800) 800-6245 option 4.
Thank you,
The Melissa Team