The initial step in a system that needs to support searching on names or addresses is to build keys from the name or address data.

These keys must be able to overcome the error and variation in the data, including missing words, extra words and word sequence variations. To provide this level of reliability, multiple keys must be generated for each name or address.

Out-of-the-box, SSA-NAME3 provides three levels of keying. Standard keys are used by the typical user. Extended keys are used by the user with critical search needs. Limited keys are used by the user who is concerned with disk space and is willing to trade some reliability for savings in space.

The keys must also support efficient access. The Algorithms used to build SSA-NAME3 Keys are designed to provide efficient access, even for common names.

In addition, to get optimal performance it is necessary for the user to store these keys in a new table that contains not only the SSA-NAME3 Keys and foreign key to the source record, but also any additional identity data that will be used for matching, filtering or display purposes. This is so that the search application does not need to perform table joins at search time to get the data necessary for matching and display.

The SSA-NAME3 Key column must be indexed.