Application and Database Design Guide

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Match Purposes

SSA-NAME3’s Matching services are used by applications, such as Informatica IR, MDM Registry- Edition & DCE, to filter, rank or match the candidate records returned from a search. The identity data from the search is compared to the identity data from the candidate record, and a score or a ruling is returned. Pre-built Matching algorithms are provided to address today’s common business purposes. These are called "Match Purposes". In combination with the Match Purpose, a selectable Match Level determines the tightness or looseness of the match. The application may also override the Score threshold, which determines the match ruling returned.

SSA-NAME3 Matching is designed to compensate for the error and variation in identity data. The matching logic is comprised of heuristic algorithms that are optimized for each class of data (example: name, organization, address, dates, codes). The algorithms include numerous rules and switches to handle initials, aliases, common variations, prefixes, suffixes, transpositions and word order.

Additionally, all Match Purposes use string cleaning routines, Edit-Lists, different matching Methods for different data types, optimized Matching options, field and token level weighting and phonetic/ orthographic stabilization.

Each Match Purpose supports a combination of mandatory and optional fields and each field is weighted according to its influence in the match decision. Some fields in some Purposes may be "grouped". Two types of grouping exist:

A "Required" group requires at least one of the field members to be non-null;

A "Best of" group will contribute only the best score from the fields in the group to the overall match score.

For example, in the "Individual" Match Purpose:

Person_Name

is a mandatory field.

One of either ID Number or Date of Birth is required.

Other attributes are optional.

The overall score returned by each Purpose is calculated by adding the participating field scores multiplied by their respective weight and divided by the total of all field weights. If a field is optional and is not provided, it is not included in the weight calculation.

The weights and matching options used in the Standard Populations are internally set by Informatica’s Population experts based on years of tuning experience. They are not available to be overridden by the application. However, if a user has a different need not supported by the Standard Population, Informatica Corporation may offer to build a Custom Population for that client.

Field Types

Below are descriptions of the fields supported by the various Match Purposes, provided in alphabetical order:

Field	Description
Address_Part1	Typically includes that part of address up to, but not including, the locality "last line". The word order, that is the position of the address components, should be the normal word order used in your data population. These should be passed in one field. Depending on table design, your application may need to concatenate these attributes into one field before calling SSA-NAME3. For example, in the US, a typical string to pass would comprise of: Care-of + Building Name + Street Number + Street Name + Street Type + Apartment Details Matching on Address_Part1 uses methods and options designed specifically for addresses. It has its own Edit-List whose rules can be overridden by the Population Override Manager or Edit Rule Wizard. It is also possible to supply the entire address in the Address_Part1 field for matching. The application may pass multiple addresses (such as a residential address and a postal address) in the one call to SSA-NAME3. See the Key Fields section for more details on Address_Part1 .
Address_Part2	Typically includes the "locality" line in an address. For example, in the US, a typical string to pass would comprise of: City + State + Zip (+ Country) Matching on Address_Part2 uses methods and options designed specifically for addresses. It uses the same Edit-List as Address_Part1 . The rules in this Edit-List can be overridden by the Population Override Manager or Edit RuleWizard.
Attribute1, Attribute2	These are two general purpose fields. They are matched using a general purpose string matching algorithm that compensates for transpositions and missing characters or digits.
Date	This field is used for matching any type of date (example: date of birth, expiry date, date of contract, date of change, creation date, etc). It expects the date to be passed in Day+Month+Year order. It supports the use or absence of delimiters between the date components. Matching on dates uses methods and options designed specifically for dates. It overcomes the typical error and variation found in this data type.
ID	The ID field is used for matching any type of ID number (example: Account number, Customer number, Credit Card number, Drivers License number, Passport, Policy number, SSN or other identity code, VIN, etc). It uses a string matching algorithm that compensates for transpositions and missing characters or digits. It also has its own Edit-List whose rules can be overridden by the Population Override Manager or Edit Rule Wizard.
Model_Number	Used to match the model number of products. The Model_Number field is a matching field and can contain alphanumeric characters. This field compares two strings to match the product model numbers.
Organization_Name	Used to match the names of organizations. These could be company names, business names, institution names, department names, agency names, trading names, etc. This field supports matching on a single name, or a compound name such as a legal name and its trading style. It has its own Edit-List whose rules can be overridden by the Population Override Manager or Edit Rule Wizard. The application may also pass multiple names (example, a legal name and a trading style) in the one call to SSA-NAME3. See the Key Fields section for more details on Organization_Name .
Person_Name	Used to match the names of people. An application should pass the full person name. The word order, that is the position of the first name, middle names and family names, should be the normal word order used in your data population. For example, in English speaking countries, the normal word order would be: First Name + Middle Name(s) + Family Name(s) Depending on table design, your application may have to concatenate these separate fields into one field before calling SSA-NAME3. This field supports matching on a single name, or an account name such as JOHN & MARY SMITH. The application may also pass multiple names (example, a married name and a former name) in the one call to SSA-NAME3. It has its own Edit-List whose rules can be overridden by the Population Override Manager or Edit Rule Wizard. See the Key Fields section for more details on Person_Name .
Postal_Area	The Postal_Area field can be used to place more emphasis on the postal code than if it were included in the Address_Part2 field. It is used for all types of postal codes, including Zip codes. It uses a string matching algorithm that compensates for transpositions and missing characters or digits. It also has its own Edit-List whose rules can be overridden by the Population Override Manager or Edit Rule Wizard.
Product_Description	Used to match the description of products. The matching rules for product names are not as strict as for a person name or an organization name. The Product_Description field uses word pairs or a bigram to search, match, and handle additional variations between product names and description. The default key length of the Product_Description field is 8 bytes.
Product_Name	Used to match the names of products. The matching rules for product names are not as strict as for a person name or an organization name. The Product_Name field uses word pairs or a bigram to search, match, and handle additional variations between product names and description. The default key length of the Product_Name field is 8 bytes.
Telephone_Number	The Telephone_Number field is used to match telephone numbers. It uses a string matching algorithm that compensates for transpositions and missing digits or area codes. It also has its own Edit-List whose rules can be overridden by the Population Override Manager or Edit Rule Wizard.

Purposes Types

Below are descriptions of the Purposes supported by the Standard Populations, provided in alphabetical order.

Address

This Purpose is designed to identify an address match. The address might be postal, residential, delivery, descriptive, formal or informal.

This Match purpose is typically used after a search by

Address_Part1

Field	Required?
Address_Part1	Yes
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Telephone_Number	No
ID	No
Date	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

The only required field is

Address_Part1

. The fields

Address_Part2

Postal_Area

Telephone_Number

Date

Attribute1

and

Attribute2

are available as optional input fields to further differentiate an address. For example if the name of a City and/or State is provided as

Address_Part2

, it will help differentiate between a common street address [100 Main Street] in different locations.

To achieve a "best of" score between

Address_Part2

and

Postal_Area

, pass

Postal_Area

as a repeat value in the

Address_Part2

field. For example:

*Address_Part2*100 Main St*Address_Part2*06870***

In this case, the

Address_Part2

score used will be the higher of the two scored fields.

Contact

This Purpose is designed to identify a contact within an organization at a specific location.

This Match purpose is typically used after a search by

Person_Name

. However, either

Organization_Name

Address_Part1

could be used as the search criteria.

For ultimate quality, a tiered search using two or all three of these fields could be used in the search. A tiered search is for example, a

Person_Name

search followed by an

Address_Part1

search.

Field	Required?
Person_Name	Yes
Organization_Name	Yes
Address_Part1	Yes
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Telephone_Number	No
ID	No
Date	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

The required fields are

Person_Name

Organization_Name

, and

Address_Part1

. This is designed to successfully match person X at company Y and address Z.

To further qualify a match, the fields

Address_Part2

Postal_Area

Telephone_Number

Date

Attribute1

and

Attribute2

may be optionally provided.

To achieve a "best of" score between

Address_Part2

and

Postal_Area

, pass

Postal_Area

as a repeat value in the

Address_Part2

field. For example:

*Address_Part2*100 Main St*Address_Part2*06870***

In this case, the

Address_Part2

score used will be the higher of the two scored fields.

Corporate Entity

The

Corporate Entity

Purpose is designed to identify an Organization by its legal corporate name, including the legal endings such as INC, LTD, etc. It is designed for applications that need to honor the differences between such names as ABC TRADING INC and ABC TRADING LTD.

This Match purpose is typically used after a search by

Organization_Name

Field	Required?
Organization_Name	Yes
Address_Part1	No
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Telephone_Number	No
ID	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

It is in essence the same purpose as Organization, except that tighter matching is performed and legal endings are not treated as noise.

To achieve a "best of" score between

Address_Part2

and

Postal_Area

, pass

Postal_Area

as a repeat value in the

Address_Part2

field. For example:

*Address_Part2*100 Main St*Address_Part2*06870***

In this case, the

Address_Part2

score used will be the higher of the two scored fields.

Division

The

Division

Purpose is designed to identify an Organization at an Address. It is typically used after a search by

Organization_Name

or by

Address_Part1

, or both.

Field	Required?
Organization_Name	Yes
Address_Part1	Yes
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Telephone_Number	No
ID	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

It is in essence the same purpose as Organization, except that Address_Part1 is a required field.

Thus, this Purpose is designed to match company X at an address of Y (or Z, etc, if multiple addresses are supplied).

To achieve a "best of" score between

Address_Part2

and

Postal_Area

, pass

Postal_Area

as a repeat value in the

Address_Part2

field. For example:

*Address_Part2*100 Main St*Address_Part2*06870***

In this case, the

Address_Part2

score used will be the higher of the two scored fields.

Family

The Family purpose is designed to identify matches where individuals with the same or similar family names share the same address or the same telephone number.

This purpose is typically used after a tiered search (multi-search) by

Address_Part1

and

Telephone_Number

It is not practical to search by

Person_Name

because ultimately only one word from the Person_Name needs to match, and a one-word search will not perform well in most situations.

Field	Required?
Person_Name	Yes
Address_Part1	Yes
Telephone_Number	Yes
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

The score will be based on best of the above group.

Emphasis is placed on the Last Name, or "Major Word" of the

Person_Name

field, so this is one of the few cases where word order is important in the way the records are passed to SSA-NAME3 for matching.

However, a reasonable score will be generated provided that a match occurs between the major word in one name and any other word in the other name.

Required fields are

Person_Name

Address_Part1

and

Telephone_Numbe

r. Optional qualifying fields are

Address_Part2

Postal_Area

Attribute1

, and

Attribute2

To achieve a "best of" score between

Address_Part2

and

Postal_Area

, pass

Postal_Area

as a repeat value in the

Address_Part2

field. For example:

*Address_Part2*100 Main St*Address_Part2*06870***

In this case, the

Address_Part2

score used will be the higher of the two scored fields.

Fields

This Purpose is provided for general non-specific use. It is designed in such a way that there are no required fields. All field types are available as optional input fields.

Field	Required?
Person_Name	No
Organization_Name	No
Address_Part1	No
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Telephone_Number	No
ID	No
Date	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

One way this Purpose could be used is as a non-exact match filter before applying some other Match Purpose. For exact match filters, use the

Filter

Purpose. For example, before passing a record to the

Division

Purpose, use the

Fields

Purpose to eliminate any company with

numbers which do not score above 80%. To do this, the application would first pass the

numbers to SSA-NAME3 for matching using

PURPOSE=FIELDS

, and then decide based on the score returned whether to pass the full records for matching by the

Division

Purpose.

Filter1-9

The Filter Purpose is provided so that the application can perform exact match filtering based on the setting of one or more flags in the records. One call to

ssan3_match

can use up to nine Filters (

Filter1-9

Field	Required?
Filter1-9	Yes

For example, say an index supported searching and matching across two types of names: Company names (identified by a Name-Type-Flag of "C"), and Person names (identified by a Name-Type-Flag of "P"). A search application may need to support searches across both name types, as well as within each name type. To support the "within each name type" search, the application can use the Filter Purpose to filter out exact matches based on the name type flag.

The fields

Filter1-9

can be any code or flag.

For non-exact filtering, use the

Fields

Purpose.

Household

The Household purpose is designed to identify matches where individuals with the same or similar family names share the same address.

This purpose is typically used after a search by

Address_Part1

It is not practical to search by

Person_Name

because ultimately only one word from the Person_Name needs to match, and a one-word search will not perform well in most situations.

Field	Required?
Person_Name	Yes
Address_Part1	Yes
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Telephone_Number	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

Emphasis is placed on the Last Name, or "Major Word" of the

Person_Name

field, so this is one of the few cases where word order is important in the way the records are passed to SSA-NAME3 for matching.

However, a reasonable score will be generated provided that a match occurs between the major word in one name and any other word in the other name.

Required fields are

Person_Name

and

Address_Part1

. Optional qualifying fields are

Address_Part2

Postal_Area

Telephone_Number

Attribute1

, and

Attribute2

To achieve a "best of" score between

Address_Part2

and

Postal_Area

, pass

Postal_Area

as a repeat value in the

Address_Part2

field. For example:

*Address_Part2*100 Main St*Address_Part2*06870***

In this case, the

Address_Part2

score used will be the higher of the two scored fields.

Individual

This Purpose is designed to identify a specific individual by name and with either the same ID number or Date of Birth attributes.

It is typically used after a search by

Person_Name

Field	Required?
Person_Name	Yes
ID	At least one
Date	of these two
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

The required fields are

Person_Name

, and one of either

and

Date

The fields

Attribute1

and

Attribute2

may be optionally provided to further qualify the match.

Organization

The Organization Purpose is designed to match organizations primarily by name. It is targeted at online searches when a name only lookup is required and a human is available to make the choice. Matching in batch would typically require other attributes in addition to name to make match decisions.

Field	Required?
Organization_Name	Yes
Address_Part1	No
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Telephone_Number	No
ID	No
Date	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

The only required field is

Organization_Name

. The fields

Address_Part1

Address_Part2

Postal_Area

Telephone_Number

Date

Attribute1

and

Attribute2

may are also provided as optional input fields to refine the ranking.

To achieve a "best of" score between

Address_Part2

and

Postal_Area

, pass

Postal_Area

as a repeat value in the

Address_Part2

field. For example:

*Address_Part2*100 Main St*Address_Part2*06870***

In this case, the

Address_Part2

score used will be the higher of the two scored fields.

Person_Name

This Purpose is designed to identify a Person by name. It is targeted at online searches when a name only lookup is required and a human is available to make the choice. Matching in batch would typically require other attributes in addition to name to make match decisions.

Field	Required?
Person_Name	Yes
Address_Part1	No
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Telephone_Number	No
ID	No
Date	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

The only required field is

Person_Name

. The optional fields available for this purpose are

Address_Part1

Address_Part2

Postal_Area

Telephone_Number

Date

Attribute1

, and

Attribute2

To achieve a "best of" score between

Address_Part2

and

Postal_Area

, pass

Postal_Area

as a repeat value in the

Address_Part2

field. For example:

*Address_Part2*100 Main St*Address_Part2*06870***

In this case, the

Address_Part2

score used will be the higher of the two scored fields.

Product

Use the

Product

purpose to identify and match the products by names, description, and other details, such as model numbers. Matching in batches requires other attributes in addition to the product name to make match decisions.

The following table lists the fields that you can specify for the

Product

purpose:

Field	Required
Product_Name	Yes
Product_Description	No
Model_Number	No
Company_Name	No
ID	No
Code	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

Resident

The Resident Purpose is designed to identify a person at an address.

This purpose is typically used after a search by either

Person_Name

Address_Part1

, or both in a multi-search.

Field	Required?
Person_Name	Yes
Address_Part1	Yes
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Telephone_Number	No
ID	No
Date	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

The required fields are

Person_Name

and

Address_Part1

. The fields

Address_Part2

Postal_Area

Telephone_Number

Date

Attribute1

and

Attribute2

are optional input fields to help qualify or rank a match if more information is available.

To achieve a "best of" score between

Address_Part2

and

Postal_Area

, pass

Postal_Area

as a repeat value in the

Address_Part2

field. For example:

*Address_Part2*100 Main St*Address_Part2*06870***

In this case, the

Address_Part2

score used will be the higher of the two scored fields.

Wide_Contact

This Purpose is designed to loosely identify a contact within an organization - that is without regard to actual location.

It is typically used after a search by

Person_Name

, however, a second search by

Organization_Name

could be used to get better quality.

Field	Required?
Person_Name	Yes
Organization_name	Yes
ID	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

The fields required for this Purpose are

Person_Name

and

Organization_Name

. This is designed to successfully match a person X at company Y.

In addition to the required fields,

Attribute1

and

Attribute2

may be optionally provided for matching to further qualify a contact.

Wide_Household

The

Wide_Household

purpose is designed to identify matches where the same address is shared by individuals with the same family name or with the same telephone number.

This purpose is typically used after a search by

Address_Part1

It is not practical to search by

Person_Name

because ultimately only one word from the

Person_Name

needs to match, and a one-word search will not perform well in most situations.

Field	Required?
Address_Part1	Yes
Person_Name	Yes
Telephone_Number	Yes
Address_Part2	No
Postal_Area	No
Attribute1	No
Attribute2	No

The score will be based on best of the above group.

Emphasis is placed on the Last Name, or "Major Word" of the

Person_Name

field, so this is one of the few cases where word order is important in the way the records are passed to SSA-NAME3 for matching.

However, a reasonable score will be generated provided that a match occurs between the major word in one name and any other word in the other name.

Required fields are

Person_Name

Address_Part1

and

Telephone_Number

. Optional qualifying fields are

Address_Part2

Postal_Area

Attribute1

and

Attribute2

To achieve a "best of" score between

Address_Part2

and

Postal_Area

, pass

Postal_Area

as a repeat value in the

Address_Part2

field. For example:

*Address_Part2*100 Main St*Address_Part2*06870***

In this case, the

Address_Part2

score used will be the higher of the two scored fields.

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Table of Contents

Application and Database Design Guide

Application and Database Design Guide

Match Purposes

Match Purposes

Field Types

Purposes Types

Address

Contact

Corporate Entity

Division

Family

Fields

Filter1-9

Household

Individual

Organization

Person_Name

Product

Resident

Wide_Contact

Wide_Household