The SSA-NAME3 Frequency tables are used in the Key and Search Range building functions of SSANAME3. They are used by these Algorithms to generate keys that allow for improved performance and reduced selectivity for common name searches. As such, they are only used for field types that are available for key or search range building. These are typically:

Person Names
Organization Names
Street Addresses

Most Standard Populations include pre-packaged Frequency tables built from data representative of that particular population. For the majority of SSA-NAME3 users, these packaged Frequency tables are adequate for providing the right balance of reliability and performance.

However, in some applications where the volume of data is very large, where high performance is critical, or where the data content is thought to be very unrepresentative of the data used to build the frequency tables for the Standard Population, there may be some benefit in overriding the Frequency tables using the organization’s own data.

In other cases, where the search reliability is critical (i.e. there is a very high level of risk associated with missing matches), it may be beneficial to remove the Frequency table from the Standard Population. This will typically lower the performance of the search, but can improve reliability at the edge for a search (i.e. where the boundary exists between suspect matches and non-matches).

The Population Override Manager allows the data administrator to override or remove a Frequency table.