Automated database blocking and record matching

摘要

An automated blocking technique is used as a first step to find approximate matches in a database. The technique builds a blocking set to be as liberal as possible in retrieving records that match on individual fields or sets of fields while avoiding selection criteria that are predicted to return more than the maximum number of records defining a particular special requirement. The ability to do blocking without extensive manual setup at low cost is highly advantageous especially when using a machine learning based second-stage matching algorithm.