Your raw party information can include typographical errors, spelling errors, inconsistent formats, and abbreviations due to input errors. For this reason, searches performed on raw values often are inconclusive or miss potential matches.
Transformations transform attribute values in the staged schema so that the values are more similar and useful for the purpose of matching records. Transformations neutralize the effects of data errors on your searches. For example, a transformation that removes all of the double letters in a party name transforms a name such as Allied Freight into Alied Freight. This transformation makes it easier to match to a party if a typographical error, such as a missing double letter, exists.
After your raw data has been transformed and populated into the staged schema, match rules can use the transformed data to score each record to determine if the record is considered alike enough to be a match to an input value.
DQM includes several standard, or seeded, transformations. You can also develop your own transformations.
DQM provides several predefined transformations, such as Cleanse and Exact. The Exact transformation accomodates various characters in non-English languages. See: Seeded Transformations, Oracle Trading Community Architecture Reference Guide.
For example, the Cleanse transformation performs these actions:
Capitalizes all letters.
Zannardi-Montoya is transformed to ZANNARDI-MONTOYA.
Removes nonalphanumeric characters.
ZANNARDI-MONTOYA is transformed to ZANNARDI MONTOYA.
Reduces any white space to one space.
Removes double letters, retaining only one of the double letters.
ZANNARDI MONTOYA is transformed to ZANARDI MONTOYA.
Removes vowels except initial vowels.
ZANARDI MONTOYA is transformed to ZNRD MNTY.
The final result from the Cleanse transformation is ZNRD MNTY. This result would be populated into the staged schema.
All seeded transformations are available in packages. Not all seeded transformations are automatically populated into the staged schema. During the installation of DQM, you can decide if you want to use all of the available transformations.
To ensure that a seeded transformation is populated into the staged schema, you must define the transformation and then run the DQM Staging program. See: Defining Attributes and Transformations and DQM Staging Program.