Patent ID: 9710534
Date: 2017-07-18
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. A method for linking data records across datasets, the method comprising: identifying a plurality of datasets, each dataset comprising at least one data record, each data record associated with an entity and comprising one or more attributes of that entity and a value associated with each attribute, each value comprising a value string comprising at least one of alpha-numeric characters, non-alphanumeric characters and spaces; transforming each data record in each dataset into one or more data record triples, each data record triple for a given data record comprising an identification of a given record, a given attribute within that data record and a value for the given attribute; converting each value in each data record triple into one or more tokens, each token comprising a single alpha-numeric character, a single non-alphanumeric character or a value sub-string comprising at least one of alpha-numeric characters and non-alphanumeric characters; comparing values associated with attributes across datasets using the tokens; identifying matching attributes having values that satisfy a predetermined similarity threshold; identifying linkage points between pairs of datasets, each linkage point linking one or more pairs of data records, each data record in each pair of data records contained in one of a given pair of datasets and each pair of data records associated with a common entity having matching attributes in the given pair of datasets; and linking data records associated with the common entities across datasets using the identified linkage points; wherein converting each value into one or more tokens comprises placing the value string into the set of tokens without changes, transforming any upper case alpha-numeric character in the value string into a corresponding lower case alpha character, breaking the value string into a plurality of tokens defined by the spaces in the value string, replacing non-alphanumeric characters with spaces or breaking the value string into a plurality of tokens comprising all lowercase alpha-numeric strings of a predetermined length.