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mSQL FAQ

Lauren Wheeler
  • Updated

 

What are the benefits of using matchIT SQL?

mSQL is a comprehensive data quality tool set that is tightly integrated directly into SQL Server. Because you have the opportunity to work with your data where it lives, there are several major business benefits:

 

  • Streamline the data management process
  • Reduce the demands on IT
  • Maintain up-to-date customer information
  • Maintain clean, mailable addresses
  • Establish a true single customer view
  • Prevent bad data from entering your system

 

How is matchIT SQL licensed?

To meet the various needs of our customers, there are several options for licensing matchIT SQL.
  • Single server license
  • Enterprise license
  • Address Validation Add-On (US or additional countries, including geocoding data)
  • Transactional Add-On

For pricing on matchIT SQL, please email us at sales@360science.com to speak with a Sales Rep now.

 

How is support for matchIT SQL provided?

The matchIT SQL Technical Support Team can be reached by opening a ticket at support.syniti.com.

During initial implementation, your Account Manager and a dedicated Support Technician will walk you through installation and help you setup your first job.  At any time, you may contact support for help with customizing match keys and weights to eliminate specific matches you do not want and increase the matches that you do want. Although our defaults work about 85% of the time, matchIT SQL is extremely flexible and Support Technicians are always standing by to help you customize the system to meet your specific needs.

 

Do I have to be a programmer to use matchIT SQL effectively?

Absolutely not. We’ve already written all the code required in .net to get you up and running, and we provide SSIS tasks with the install that you can simply drag and drop and configure – the only thing you need to query is the results.

Alternatively, if you find SSIS daunting we supply sample scripts to run stored procedures so all you have to do is point them to a config file. So as long as you can run a few basic queries in Management Studio, we can get you up and running with mSQL.

If you are a .net programmer, using mSQL will still save you weeks of development time and deliver far better results than using SQL Server’s inbuilt facilities (e.g. SQL Server fuzzy matching, DQS). This is because mSQL uses our proven matching engine, the mAPI, which is squarely focused on the particular challenges that matching of contact data represents. And we’ve done all the integration work you’d need to do if you programmed to our API directly – so now you can concentrate on the aspects of your project relating to your users’ broader requirements or the consumption of the results.

 

Do I get access to all matchIT SQL upgrades?

Yes. mSQL is updated approximately 4 times per year and upgrades are free of charge. You will work directly with your Support Technician to determine when it is appropriate for you to upgrade. 

 

Does my table need to be in a specific format?

No. mSQL can work with all kinds of data, regardless of the format and does not require pre-processing. We do recommend that your table has a primary key.  Your data can come in different formats and not require pre-processing.  So whether your data has name parsed out into Prefix/Firstname/Lastname, or is coming in as a fullname in a single column,  or has 2 address lines or 7 address lines,  we’ll work with it as it is and match within/across disparate data sources.
 
 

Does mSQL overwrite my original data file?

Absolutely not. Our key mantra is “Do no Harm’ so we will always write the results to a new table within the same database as your source so you can see the changes before updating your data, or just work with the output tables we give you and not have to change your source in order to get the resulting outputs you need for your project.
 

Can I change settings, or is matchIT SQL a black box?

mSQL is highly configurable. We expose the options of our underlying API for you to set and configure. You can control the match keys (which tell us what to compare in the first place), as well control the results through the weights and constraints (meaning more good matches, less false matches).  Our knowledgeable support team is available to walk you through changing more advanced settings to meet your particular needs.

 

What kind of performance can I expect?

Performance depends on a lot of factors, including the hardware (CPU speed, number of cores, I/O throughput), and whether other processes are running on the machine.  For matching, it additionally depends greatly on the degree of duplication and whether you are matching at multiple levels.

On an Intel Core Quad with Hyper threading, 16GB RAM, 3.4 GHz server, the following benchmarks were obtained:

mSQL Performance Benchmarks*

  • Match key generation >> 30M records per hour
  • Address verification >> 3M records per hour (on well-structured addresses)
  • NCOA >> 1M records per hour (depends also on internet connection speed)
  • Dedupe 1M Records >> 2 minutes (fuzzy match rate ~ 28%)
  • Dedupe 80M Records >> Less than 4 hours (fuzzy match rate ~ 17%)
  • Overlap 5M Records into 40 M >> 15 minutes (fuzzy match rate ~ 5%)

*Intel Core Quad with Hyper threading, 16GB RAM, 3.4 GHz server

 

Can matchIT SQL match non-English data?

Yes. Out of the box, mSQL can effectively match any names in the Western alphabet, dealing effectively with European and dual language names and addresses and multi-country databases.  The matching algorithms make special allowance for accented characters and the lookup tables include basic European language entries which can be built on by the user for individual countries and languages.

 

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