Output Selector: Lowest Value

1.3.4.10.8 Output Selector: Lowest Value

The Lowest Value output selector selects the lowest value for an attribute from all the records being merged together. This is most useful for Number or Date attributes, when it will select the lowest number or earliest date for an attribute. For String attributes, it will select the first value using an alphabetic sort on the data.

Use the Lowest Value selector for output attributes that are selecting Number or Date values, and where the best value is likely to be the lowest, or earliest.

For example, when deduplicating a dataset, there may be multiple records for the same customer. If there is a date column in the source data such as Customer_Since_Date, the earliest of the date values within the group is most likely to be the right one.

The following table describes the configuration options:

Configuration Description

Configuration	Description
Inputs	Any Number or Date attributes from any input data sets.
Options	Specify the following options: `Use first non-empty value if tied?`: this option provides a way of selecting a value arbitrarily if records are tied in output selection; that is, all records in the group have the same value in the check attribute. The first alphabetically sorted value will be selected for String values, the lowest value for Numbers, and the earliest value for Dates. Type: Yes/No. Default value: Yes.

Inputs

Any Number or Date attributes from any input data sets.

Options

Specify the following options:

Use first non-empty value if tied?: this option provides a way of selecting a value arbitrarily if records are tied in output selection; that is, all records in the group have the same value in the check attribute.

The first alphabetically sorted value will be selected for String values, the lowest value for Numbers, and the earliest value for Dates.

Type: Yes/No. Default value: Yes.

Example

In this example, the Lowest Value output selector is used to select the earliest date for a Customer_Since attribute from the values for this attribute for each record in each match group.

Example configuration:

Use first non-empty value if tied? = Yes

Example output

The following table shows examples of output selection using the above configuration:

Table 1-107 Example Output Using Lowest Value Selector

Record A	Record B	Output value(Lowest Value)
01-Aug-1988 00:00:00	09-Mar-2001 00:00:00	01-Aug-1988 00:00:00
05-Sep-1982 00:00:00	02-Jun-1995 00:00:00	05-Sep-1982 00:00:00
01-Jan-1981 00:00:00	01-Jan-1982 00:00:00	01-Jan-1981 00:00:00
01-Sep-1980 00:00:00	Null	01-Sep-1980 00:00:00
01-Sep-1980 00:00:00	01-Sep-1980 00:00:00	01-Sep-1980 00:00:00