Monday, February 20, 2012

Near exact matches, help needed

I'm currently working on a match function to compare two char based columns in differnet tables to create a join.

In this particular case, I'm using a few different approaches to create a higher match ratio, as typos do happen.

For instance I use a join function using convert(char(10), tbla.field) = convert(char(10), tblb.field) to match only using the first 10 characters, as a lot of records have different endings, but are in fact the same.

Are there any other ways I could attempt to make matches? I was wondering if there was a dedicated string comparison operation giving me a percentage feedback. Debut joining dbut would give an 80% match, and thus I would leave it up to the user to decide to minimum match requirements.

Thanks in advancePerhaps the SOUNDEX function could help you out: SOUNDEX - Returns a four-character (SOUNDEX) code to evaluate the similarity of two strings.

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