The Contact OSID is an auxiliary service that relates
contact information to OsidObjects.
Addresses
An Address is an OsidObject
for a the address of a Resource.
Specific breakdowns of an Address may be
made available in an AddressRecord but and
the Address exposes a text form of the
address.
Contacts
A Contact is an OsidRelationship
between an Address and a reference
Id Contacts are time-variant
which allow Addresses to become effective
based on schedules.
Contacts have an addressee. Addressees
are Resources that indicate to whom or what
should be contacted. In the case of making contacts for
external Resources, the reference Id
and the addressee Resource
Id may be the same.
Example
An Address exists for Tom:
tom@earth.com. An OSID Consumer wishing to contact Tom
does by looking up effective Contacts for
Tom as a reference and then retrieving the related
Addresses for the Contacts.
An Contact exists for a startup company
(reference) where the addressee is Scott with an
Address at 162 School Street. Another
Contact exists with an addressee for Sarah also
with an Address at 162 School Street. A
single Address can be used for 162 School
Street with an address Resource of Scott
& Sarah's House. Gypsy can be added by creating a
Contact referencing the dog related to the
same Address.
Address Book Cataloging
Addresses and Contacts
can be organized into federateable AddressBooks.
Sub Packages
The Contact OSID includes a rules subpackage for
managing the effective status of Contacts
and a Contact Batch OSID for managing Contacts
and Addresses in bulk.
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