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.