Mimicking the Soundex Capability

ALW

I need to do a duplicate check in my system to find Company Names that are similar but may have been entered in a different way - similar to a soundex type of comparison. So for example - if the user is entering in "Walmart" as a new company but the company already exists in the system as "Wal-mart" or they enter in ABC Company but it is already in the system as "A.B.C Company" - I want to alert the user that there is likely a duplicate in the system. Is there a way to do this? I guess I could store the name as another field with no punctuation or spaces and check against this but wanted to see if anyone has run into a similar business need scenario.

Thanks!

johntalbott

SQL Server and MySQL have Soundex functions. You could call a stored procedure that uses a soundex function as part of your duplicate check process.

ALW

Thank you - that is a great idea!

PointsWell

Obv this is 2 years late to the party, but...

There is an Apache package which does Soundex and a number of soundex derived checks (eg Daitch Mokotoff Soundex for Eastern European and Jewish names)

Can't remember of the package has been implemented in AIM but if it has it is only a subset, that obviously does not include Soundex. A Java plugin is relatively straight forward when you are just trying to implement another package. There is a video example.

It would be useful to have this implemented in the default distribution as it would provide for more than basic string checking of names.

EDIT: The Apache Codec package (v1.2) has been included with AIM, Soundex and other comparison methods are not fully implemented as a function within AIM. It would be good if could be as it is half there already.