Abstract: The present invention relates to methods, computing devices and computer program products for encoding unique combinations of technical characteristics of a set of input data values, or members of a set of input data values, to use as the index to retrieve a unique, corresponding record from an identically encoded reference database. One particular use of such retrieval relates to residential and commercial addresses, in which one or more reference address datasets comprising a plurality of address records are standardised and allocated to two or more sets. A unique identifier is assigned for each unique address component in each set and the standardised plurality of records in each set are encoded by converting each address component to the corresponding unique identifier. A lock code is generated for each of the encoded standardised plurality of records. An input address is received and is standardised.

Abstract: The present invention relates to methods, computing devices and computer program products for encoding unique combinations of technical characteristics of a set of input data values, or members of a set of input data values, to use as the index to retrieve a unique, corresponding record from an identically encoded reference database. One particular use of such retrieval relates to residential and commercial addresses, in which one or more reference address datasets comprising a plurality of address records are standardised and allocated to two or more sets. A unique identifier is assigned for each unique address component in each set and the standardised plurality of records in each set are encoded by converting each address component to the corresponding unique identifier. A lock code is generated for each of the encoded standardised plurality of records. An input address is received and is standardised.