Re: Converting strings to ASCII codes to increase search

Yeah, unique customer ID'ing is always an issue. We had the same thing with the same people coming to the website over and over. You could always just generate a hash value, based on a combination of last name, first name, DOB etc... Then index that thing. That will be fast. You may have to batch regenerate the hash on the table a few times as you refine your algorithm.

As a practical matter though, given any of this matching will never be perfect, what is your goal for data quality? 80% - 90% -99%? At some point, you just have to say good enough is good enough.

And lastly, if uniquely identifying customers is vital, you can always use an outside source like Acxiom to identify customers.

I am not even going to comment on the converting to ASCII idea ;-) Received on Tue Feb 20 2007 - 11:12:20 CST