Master Index Match Engine Reference

Unicode AlphaNumeric Comparator (usus)

This comparison function is a custom version of a generic string comparison function. It is similar to the Unicode String Comparator, but it is also similar to the Advanced Jaro AlphaNumeric Comparator in that it is designed to work on national identifiers like social security numbers. This locale-oriented comparator recognizes the nuances of each language and supports the complexities and subtleties of each. This function takes into account such uncertainty factors as string length, transpositions, key punch errors, and visual memory errors. It can also take into consideration field length, allowed character types, and invalid values. This comparison function takes the parameters described in the following table.

Table 6 usus Comparison Function Parameters

Parameter 

Description 

language

An indicator of the language being used for the information stored in the database. Enter one of the following codes to indicate the language in use. 

da - Danish

sv - Swedish

nb - Norwegian Bokmål

nn - Norwegian Nynorsk

nl - Dutch

es - Spanish

fr - French

en - English

it - Italian

de - German

fixed-length

An optional parameter that takes the length of the field value into account. If a fixed length is specified, the match engine considers any field of a different length to be a non-match. Specify any integer smaller than the value specified for the size specified for the field (for more information, see Matching Rules Section).

character-type 

An indicator of whether the field must be all numeric. Specify “nu” for numeric only, or specify “an” to allow alphanumeric characters. The match engine considers any fields containing characters that are not allowed to be a non-match. 

invalid-characters 

A list of invalid characters for the field. If you specify a character, the match engine considers fields that consist of only that character to be a non-match. For example, if you specify “0”, then an SSN field cannot contain all zeros. Specify as many alphanumeric characters as needed, separated by a space.