After you have entered basic details for the match rule you are creating, you select attributes to include in the match rule and, for match rules with Expanded Duplicate Identification or Bulk Duplicate Identification purpose, define the usage of each attribute.

After this procedure, assign transformations and, for match rules with Expanded Duplicate Identification or Bulk Duplicate Identification purpose, optionally scores and thresholds. See: Assigning Scores, Transformations, and Thresholds.

Procedure

1. Select attributes, from the Party, Address, Contact, and Contact Point entities, that help you obtain all relevant matches. For example, if you want to find records that have matching names, include the Party Name attribute in the match rule.

   Note: Only defined attributes are available for you to select. See: Defining Attributes and Transformations.

   If this match rule has the Bulk Duplicate Identification purpose, and you plan to use this rule for bulk import, then do not select user-defined custom attributes. See: Bulk Import Overview.

   If you are defining a match rule with the Search purpose, the selected attributes determine the search criteria that appear in the user interface. The actual prompt that appears for each criterion is the user defined name. See: Defining Attributes and Transformations.

2. (Bulk Duplicate Identification, Expanded Duplicate Identification or Integration Services only) Define the usage of the selected attributes in the match rule..

   • Acquisition: Used for comparing an input record to the records in the staged schema, to obtain an initial set of matched records.

     If you specify more than one acquisition attribute in the match rule, the search operator that you defined for the match rule determines whether all or any attribute must match to determine if the input record is a match to a record in the staged schema. See: Defining Single Match Rules.

     Do not be too restrictive with your acquisition if you want fairly loose matches. For example, if you use the Address, City, and State attributes for acquisition, with the Match All search operator, then a record must have the same combination of address, city, and state to match. If you use just City and State, however, you will have more potential matches, and can still use address as a match criterion by including Address as a scoring attribute.

     The initial set of matched records obtained by acquisition is called the work unit. A work unit includes all records with acquisition attribute values, transformed using the transformations, that match attribute values of the input record. The work unit can be the final set of matches or used for scoring.

     If you only want to consider this initial set of matched records, you do not have to define scoring attributes and specify thresholds or scores. You would have a match rule that requires that a record matches any or all acquisition attributes you have selected.

   • Filter: Used in acquisition so that the attribute must be a match in the work unit. The search engine groups filter attributes of the same entity under a match-all condition, even the Party entity.

     Note: If the attribute's type is Lookup, then the DQM search engine defaults that attribute as a filter because the values of the attribute are usually not unique across records.

     For example, this table displays a set of acquisition attributes:

     Attribute Name	Entity	Type	Filter	Default as Filter
     Party Name	Party		Yes	No
     D-U-N-S Number	Party		Yes	No
     CEO Name	Party		No	No
     Address 1	Address		No	No
     Country	Address	Lookup	Yes	Yes
     Phone Number	Contact Point		No	No

     If the match rule's search operator is Match Any, then all of the returned records will match either of the following criteria:

     • Party Name and D-U-N-S Number

     • Address 1 and Country

     Even though the search operator is Match Any, and Address 1 is not a filter, all acquisition attributes within the same entity, other than Party, must be a match. In this case, because they are filters within the same entity, party attributes Party Name and D-U-N-S Number both also must match. See: Defining Single Match Rules.

     Note: Attributes used as filters are only used in acquisition, not scoring, because all records must contain these filter attributes.

   • Scoring: Used to score the records in the work unit. With the scoring component of a match rule, records that do not exactly match the values of the acquisition attributes values can still be considered a match.

     Note: Scoring attributes do not have to be the same as the acquisition attributes, and you can use more attributes for scoring. For best results with match rules with the Search purpose, however, use the same attributes for both acquisition and scoring.

     You must have acquisition attributes from each entity that has scoring attributes in the same match rule. For example, if you have scoring attributes from the Party and Contact Point entities, you must also have acquisition attributes from those two entities, even if not the exact same attributes.