Best Practice / Standard for storing an Address in a SQL Database

Question

I am wondering if there is some sort of \"standard\" for storing US addresses in a database? It seems this is a common task, and there should be some sort of a standard.

Answer 1

I looked into this a while ago, but for international addresses. I didn't find much in the way of a consensus. However, for the US, I found the succinctly named United States Thoroughfare, Landmark, and Postal Address Data Standard (Draft):

http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/projects/FGDC-standards-projects/street-address/index_html

I don't think that they actually provide any specific database schema ideas, but it might be a good starting point.