SSA-NAME3 provides any computer system with a variety of access paths to data using names or addresses.

Applications dealing with relatively reliable and complete data can use a high performance access path, while applications dealing with less reliable data or with a more critical problem can use more complex access paths. For any name or address, SSA-NAME3 provides a logical access path to the set of records that are likely to include relevant matching records.

In an application where a match is expected to be found (e.g. customer search), it is possible to present to a user, or process, a set of highly relevant records and then, if necessary, cast a wider net for records that are less likely to be relevant. We call this a ’positive’ search. This approach allows the designer to use techniques that progressively increase the depth of the search. At each particular depth or level it is only necessary to physically access the set of records that match that depth of search. This is significantly different than the approach of accessing a large bucket including all possible candidates and then refining the records using a "scoring" technique to control the depth. For example:

Figure 1: Diagrammatic example of a ’positive’ search * means "and anything else"

In applications where the search or file data is unreliable or incomplete, or where a match is not expected to be found, or where the search is critical, it is possible to invoke different types of search depending on the thoroughness required or the extent of the unreliability. These are collectively called a ’negative’ search. For example, this is one type of negative search:

Figure 2: Diagrammatic example of a ’negative’ search

The major features of SSA-NAME3 are summarized below:

SSA-NAME3:

SSA-NAME3 will work equally well in the following environments: