External match jobs match externally prepared records with a base object, which return results based on the current match settings. External match jobs do not load the data from the input table into the base object or affect base object data in any way. You can use external matching to pretest data, test match rules, and inspect the results before running the standard Match job.

You can use External Match jobs to process both fuzzy-match and exact-match rules and fuzzy-match and exact-match base objects.

The External Match job runs as a batch job. There is no corresponding SIF request that external applications can invoke.