Re: Storing Telephone Numbers

"Simon Verona" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Here in the UK, there are various number
>formats depending on location and carrier that it would be impossible for me
>to even write a validator for a UK number.  Add in all the possibilities
>for other countries and it becomes just about impossible!

"Impossible" is just a synonym for "a challenge"  :)

>If you then take
>into account the fact that formats change in some countries from time to
>time (here in the UK the number formats have changed 3 or 4 times in the
>past 10 years!) then it becomes even more impossible to maintain even if oyu
>managed the initial task!

If anyone wonders about the value of Web Services or how they can be
used, this is the perfect application for one.  I can easily imagine
someone starting a service, charging US$.01 or less per transaction
depending on volume.  If this is such an "impossible" task, with rules
that are constantly changing, then it's actually to the advantage of
developers to code into a service that provides the formatting rather
than performing the task on their own.

I'm making an oblique point here, not necessarily related to
formatting phone numbers: if you have ANY code that you believe does a
function exceptionally well, especially something that's difficult for
other developers and it's of value to users, implement your code as a
web service rather than keeping it hidden as a minor function of a
large package.  If you aren't selling complete software solutions,
this is a way to sell services to a lot of sites who already have
software.

>Personally, I'm annoyed by a lot of Windows software and Web sites that
>assumes that everybody is American.  I've lost track of the number of times
>that I've had to somehow convert my UK phone number which has the form XXXX
>XXX XXXX into the American format of (XXX)-XXX-XXXX.   It just doesn't work!
>Even worse when the validitor doesn't like a zero at the front of a phone
>number (I guess you don't have that in the States but all UK numbers begin
>with a zero!).

For just that reason I really try to avoid auto-formatting of phone
numbers.  Better to lack some aesthetics than to alienate real users
and especially paying customers.

Tony
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(E-mail to discuss re-purposing your special functions into web
services as a new source of revenue.)