This approach is used to reduce the cost of scoring two records.

The most expensive part of the matching process is the Scoring. Once a set of candidate records is chosen, each candidate is scored against the search record. In practice, the scoring is often complex in nature and involves several methods scoring several fields on the search and file records. If it is possible to quickly reject a candidate record by scoring it with a "light weight" (inexpensive) scoring scheme, we can avoid the need to call a more complex scheme.

The Clustering’s

PRE-SCORE-LOGIC

is used to define an optional "light weight" scoring scheme which is processed before the normal

SCORE-LOGIC

. If it returns a "no match" condition, the more expensive

SCORE-LOGIC

is not called.

Note that it is possible to apply this two stage scoring approach to Key Data by using the

Key-Pre-Score-Logic

and

Key-Logic

parameters.