When policy tables are evaluated, values in key column cells are evaluated against information parsed out of messages or retrieved from external data sources and stored in the policy context. For example, fields such as entitlements or multivalued custom fields can be retrieved from a subscriber profile stored in a subscriber profile repository (SPR) system. By default, values are evaluated as single entities, and matches must be exact. However, you can optionally specify that values be treated as a set of delimited values and evaluated as multi-value fields and accept as a match a complete or subset match of the values within the key column cell. The first row with a successful match is used. You can define up to 50 values within one cell.
Using multi-value keys makes a policy table more flexible and reduces the number of rows needed.
Example of Data Matching provides a simple example of data matching and compares the results from each matching operation.