Matching is the process of comparing two records or strings of data. The MATCH Service is used by an application program to obtain a probability (measured in percent) that two records actually refer to the same identity. This is used when selecting, rejecting or ranking records.

Usually there is one search record which is matched against a list of candidate file records with the purpose of finding some of these records suitable for further processing.

To perform its work the

MATCH

Service uses a Matching ’Scheme’ that emulates the human process of comparison of two records composed of names, codes, dates or other typical identification data.

The Matching Scheme must be pre-defined in the Matching Scheme definition file, and the Matching Scheme definition file must be generated before it can be used by the application. For more information on defining Matching Schemes, refer to the

DEFINITION and CUSTOMIZATION GUIDE FOR SSA-NAME3 SERVICE GROUPS

. For more information on Generating the Matching Scheme definition file, refer to the

GENERATION and TESTING GUIDE FOR SSA-NAME3 SERVICE GROUPS

.

This Service is mostly used by an application program after it has retrieved records from the database and before they are accepted for displaying or processing. At this point one may wish to reject some records based on them not matching well enough to the target record, or one may want to rank the records in order to process the most likely candidates first. In batch processing the Matching process takes the responsibility of the human operator in deciding what action to take.