On April 16, 2003 03:41 pm, Roberto Della Pasqua wrote:

> Hi kind group,
>
> I'm an enthusiast user of firebird, and I'm asking a very very OT question,
> please forgive me, but I'm really desperate.
>
> I need to finish a web portal in 6 languages, and I need to obtain all the
> cities of these countries: usa, canada, brasil, spain, france, germany, uk,
> australia.
>
> I have found a free db of the whole world cities, but still isn't enough
> for me because I need of these fields: city, province, region.
>
> Please can somebody help me? I can pay this service.
>

Try the post office, for each country. For example, Canada Post has a CD of
all of the postal codes in Canada, grab the city name and province, throw
away the duplicates, and your left with City and Province. The CD isn't
cheap though, I think they want several hundred dollars for it. I think the
US Postal Service has a similar service for zip codes, not sure whether they
charge for it or not, or how much if they do. Some of the other countries
may offer similar services....

There are problems with this though, place names are not as static as people
think, new municipalities are always starting up, old ones are merging
together, some change their names to better reflect their populations. Still
others are abandoned, because the young people moved away, and the old people
died off.

Paul S