Address Searching (sp?)

I have a form that inputs an address (city/state/zip/etc.). Basically I
need to search our database for this address, prior to it being entered.
Problem in that people type St. vs. Street vs. St, Ave. vs. Avenue vs. Ave,
etc. Anyone have an affective algorithm for searching for comparable
addresses? Just curious if someone has run into/solved this problem
effectively.
Thanks,
James
The problem has been solved quite effectively by address correction software
vendors. It might be quite a task to write a proprietary set of functions to
do the same thing.
Don't know if this is feasible for you but you could have a separate field
to store the street type and then provide a drop-down list so that the user
doesn't have the option to input a variant (such as Ave. instead of Avenue)
"James" wrote:

> I have a form that inputs an address (city/state/zip/etc.). Basically I
> need to search our database for this address, prior to it being entered.
> Problem in that people type St. vs. Street vs. St, Ave. vs. Avenue vs. Ave,
> etc. Anyone have an affective algorithm for searching for comparable
> addresses? Just curious if someone has run into/solved this problem
> effectively.
> Thanks,
> James
>
>