Patent ID: 8090733
Filing Date: 2012-01-03
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method of identifying an entity representation in an electronic universal database that corresponds to an entity representation in an electronic foreign database, each database comprising a plurality of entity representations, each entity representation comprising a plurality of linked records, each record comprising a plurality of fields, each field capable of containing a field value, each field value associated with a field value weight, the method comprising: electronically storing a plurality of field tables, each field table corresponding to a particular field, each field table comprising field value weights for each unique pair consisting of an arbitrary entity representation from the universal database and a field value appearing in the particular field of a record in the arbitrary entity representation from the universal database, wherein each field value weight comprises a logarithm of a probability that an arbitrary entity representation in the universal database comprises a corresponding field value in a field of a record in the arbitrary entity representation, wherein each probability comprise a ratio of entity representation in the universal database that contain a corresponding field value to a total number of entity representations in the universal database; receiving a plurality of search criteria field values identifying an entity representation in the foreign database; performing a fetch operation from an associated field table for each search criterion, by for each search criteria field value, fetching a field value weight from an the associated field table corresponding to the search criteria field value; summing results of the step of fetching field value weights for each field from the fetch operation according to entity representations from the universal database, resulting in a plurality of summed weights, one summed weight for each of a plurality of entity representations from the universal database; ranking entity representations according to the plurality of summed weights; determining a highest ranked entity representation; calculating a confidence level reflecting a likelihood that the highest ranked entity representation corresponds to the entity representation identified by the search criteria field values, wherein the calculation is based on the summed field value weight; and outputting, if the confidence level exceeds a predetermined threshold, wherein the threshold comprises a logarithm of a term comprising a confidence level, an identifier for the highest ranked entity representation.