Related Links Related Links

We realize that we are not the only team working on Standards and our standards may be based on, or leverage other standards. Here are some useful links in this domain

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
The W3C has a number of standards that are useful:
IDEAlliance
IDEAlliance (International Digital Enterprise Alliance) is a not-for-profit membership organization. IDEAlliance advances core technology to develop standards and best practices to enhance efficiency and speed information across the end-to-end digital media supply chain - creation, production, management, and delivery of knowledge=based multimedia content - digitally and in print.
  • Address Data Interchange Specification (ADIS)
    XML specification for the interchange of address data both domestically and internationally. . It includes data about the addresses, such as whether they are complete or missing particular elements that affect address quality.
  • Mail.xml  
    The core focus of Mail.XML is communication between industry members and from industry to the final mail processing and delivery organization that delivers the mail to the end consumer, e.g., USPS.
  • Mail.dat 
    Mail.dat is the standard embraced by a significant portion of the mail production industry and the US Postal Service. Mail.dat is able to facilitate efficient and process-enhancing communications - sharing comprehensive data readily, recipients and/or end-users can accept data, interpret the data for their own purposes and benefit from the resulting information
OASIS
A not-for-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society.
  • xNAL
    xNAL includes xNL as a Name Standard and xAL as an Address Standard. The 'Name and Address Markup Language (NAML)' was used as the basis for development of xNAL. The group's objective "is to develop a global standard for managing name and address data regardless of country of origin, to simplify things from maintainability point of view... They have broken up xNAL into two XML Languages: [1] xNL: eXtensible Name Language to define the name components, and [2] xAL: eXtensible Address Language to define the address components. This break up provides the flexibility to users of these standards to use one or both these standards depending upon their application environment
Universl Postal Union (UPU)
The Universal Postal Union (UPU) with its Headquarters in Berne (Switzerland), is the primary forum for cooperation between postal-sector players and helps to ensure a truly universal network of up-to-date products and services.  The UPU has a number of standards - EPPML being one of many. (Standards are available from the UPU for a price)

United States Postal Service (USPS)
There are a number of freely available publications through the following websites.