Siebel Data Quality Administration Guide > Configuring and Using Data Matching >

Process of Using Data Matching (Deduplication)

Data matching, sometimes described as deduplication, identifies possible matches for account, contact, and prospect records based on match fields defined in Siebel Tools and administrator-defined matching preferences. After potential duplicates are identified, the administrator can use the Administration - Data Quality views to merge the duplicate profiles together manually.

Data matching functionality is provided by the Siebel Data Quality (SDQ) Matching Server and the Siebel Data Quality (SDQ) Universal Connector. These product modules provide real-time or batch-mode processing, but each process handles duplicates differently:

• In real-time mode, users are prompted when entering a new record that matches another record or when saving changes to an existing record that matches another record.
• In batch mode, the application identifies potentially duplicate records and presents those records to the data administrator for resolution in the Administration- Data Quality views.

To use data matching (deduplication) functionality, you must first perform the following tasks:

• Setting the Deduplication Data Type for Data Matching
• Enabling Data Matching (Deduplication) for Real-Time Processing
• Applying Siebel Data Quality Settings
• (Optional) Setting User Preference Data Quality Settings

NOTE:  You can perform data matching without data cleansing enabled. Data matching does not necessarily require enabling data cleansing; however, the quality of the match results can vary with cleansing enabled versus with cleansing disabled, depending on the matching engine used. Some vendors use algorithms that use data cleansing, while others do not.

For more information about the Siebel Data Quality product modules that use data matching, see Siebel Data Quality Matching Server and Siebel Data Quality Universal Connector.