Regions in ACES

Region support in ACES was a bit of an afterthought. When Mexico was added, it really messed things up because the ACES rule that “a missing attribute means all” changed the meaning of past research.

Suddenly, all applications researched with the Region universe being US/CAN, now meant “US/CAN/MEX”. This had the effect of automatically picking up Mexico coverage even though it wasn’t verified by the supplier.

A band-aid was added to the specification allowing you to use the “Approved For” field in the Header to indicate “US,CAN” if you only researched those regions. Not all receivers honor this convention, however.

This is why some suppliers have decided to explicit put regions on every application. But since ACES can’t include more than one region on an application, it makes many more records.