Testing a Match Rule

After defining a match rule you may want to test it to see its results. To do this, you can use Match Rule Evaluation to examine the effects of a match rule on a small set of sample data.

  1. Open the dataflow in Enterprise Designer.
  2. Double-click the stage containing the match rule you want to test.

    Match rules are used in Interflow Match, Intraflow Match, and Transactional Match.

  3. In the match rule hierarchy, select the node you want to test and click Evaluate.
  4. On the Import tab, enter the test data (a suspect and up to 10 candidates). There are two ways to enter test data.
    • To type in the test data manually, type a suspect record under Suspect and up to ten candidates under Candidate. After typing the records, you can click Export to save the records to a file which you can import later instead of reentering the data manually.
    • To import test data from a file, click Import... and select the file containing the sample records. Delimited files can be comma, pipe or tab delimited and should have a header record with header fields that match the field names shown under Candidates. A sample header record for Household input would be:

      Name,AddressLine1,City,StateProvince

  5. Evaluate the rule using one of these methods:
    • Click Current Rule. This runs the rule defined on the Match Rule tab. Results are displayed for one suspect and candidate pair at a time. To cycle through the results, click the arrow buttons. Scores for fields and algorithms are displayed in a tree format similar to the match rule control. The results can optionally be exported to an XML file.
      Note: If you make changes to the match rule and want to apply the changes to the stage's match rule, click Save.
    • Click All Algorithms. This ignores the match rule and instead runs all algorithms against each field for suspect and candidate pairs. Results are displayed for one suspect and candidate pair at a time and can be cycled through using the arrow buttons.

    To automatically update the results as you make changes to the match rule and/or input, select the Auto update check box. When using this feature with the All Algorithms option, only changes to the input will update the results.

The results shown under Scores are color coded as follows:

  • Green—The rule resulted in a match.
  • Red—The rule that did not result in a match.
  • Gray—The rule was ignored
  • Blue—The results for individual algorithms within the rule.

To export the evaluation results in XML format, click Export.