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Back in 1999 I worked at an early web consultancy that built apps for clients on top of Oracle. We used their DB + a programming language called PL/SQL. There
by crabasa 8y ago
Back in 1999 I worked at an early web consultancy that built apps for clients on top of Oracle. We used their DB + a programming language called PL/SQL.
There was a feature of Oracle called SOUNDEX which was magical. Here's an example from their docs page [1]:
SELECT last_name, first_name
FROM hr.employees
WHERE SOUNDEX(last_name)= SOUNDEX('SMYTHE');
This query will return all people with a last name that sounds like 'Smythe', including 'Smith' and 'Smithe'.
[1] https://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14200/functions148.htm https://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14200/funct...
- msumpter 8y agoI've used similar phonetic algos in Excel to deduplicate CRM data during corporate acquisitions, it always seemed like the source data was hopelessly duplicated, but running a few of theses algos against the data, and then providing the 'best guesses' to the sales team to then do the final massaging of which accounts are truly duplicate or should be left alone. Soundex is very simple but works well, calculating a strings Jaro–Winkler distance also helped.
- PeterisP 8y agoSoundex, by the way, had it's 100th anniversary a few weeks ago - it was patented in 1918.