System and method for geocoding diverse address formats

A method and system for providing geocodes (460) in response to complete or partial address information is disclosed. The disclosure teaches embodiments that are naturally upgraded to integrate changing spatial information due to addition of countries (230), better data, political changes, and other similar changes in geographical data. A single geocoding engine (108) is capable of handling the various address formats in use in different countries and jurisdictions. The disclosed embodiments are error tolerant and capable of overcoming many errors due to spelling, variety of languages and formats used to provide and address. The diversity in addresses due to, for instance country-specific formats such as postal-codes (590) are naturally integrated into existing database of geocoding information. Preferably, the embodiments are based on JAVA to allow platform independence and use XML based communication to use networks without requiring excessive resources while providing fast services.