GeoNames Forum

I was going to import the data from the AllCountries file, but then I thought, won't that add a ton of extra data?

Wouldn't it be more efficient to load all the data into separate tables and create relationships ebtween them? If the US has 50 administrative districts - in the allcountries file, wouldn't that add 50 entries for the US?

The good question is : what do you want to do with GeoNames data ?

If you need only US data, just download US file.
http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/

At the moment I am experimenting

Eventually what I am looking for really is the ability to have a user enter a country, or more likely a postal code, and be able to return the city, state/province/admin1 area, and country.

Have a look here :
http://www.geonames.org/export/web-services.html#postalCodeLookupJSON

There is a demo link :
http://www.geonames.org/export/ajax-postalcode-autocomplete.html

See also :
http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/1791.page#7521