Data matching (also known as record or data linkage, entity resolution, object identification, or field matching) is the task of identifying, matching and merging records that correspond to the same entities from several databases or even within one database. Based on research in various domains including applied statistics, health informatics, data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, database management, and digital libraries, significant advances have been achieved over the last decade in all aspects of the data matching process, especially on how to improve the accuracy of data matching, and its scalability to large databases.
Peter Christen''s book is divided into three parts: Part I, "Overview", introduces the subject by presenting several sample applications and their special challenges, as well as a general overview of a generic data matching process. Part II, "Steps of the Data Matching Process", then details its main steps like pre-processing, indexing,
