What does Record Comparison mean? Earlier I used to become confused between Comparing and Matching of records in MDM but later I realised that there are many difference between both.Some of the key differences are:

1: Matching needs some preparation (You need to define some strategy, rules etc.) but for record comparison no preparation is needed.

2: Matching can be performed only on the fields that are included in rules where as comparison can be performed on all the fields.

3: With matching some score is associated where as with comparison no score is associated.

We can compare records in MDM via two ways:

1: Accessing MDM directly via Data Manager.
2: Accessing MDM via MDM JAVA API's.

Why we need record comparison?
Record comparison is very simple and important concept in MDM. As it helps in data cleansing which is one of the important aspect related to MDM. Record comparison is not a tough task in my opinion it’s the simplest job that can be performed.

 

Important points associated with this concept are:

(a) For record comparison we have two options:Compare Records, Compare with original.

(b) In compare with original mode we can compare only single record that too checked out but in compare records mode we can compare many records at same time. Compare with original mode is enabled only if you select single checked out record.

(c) The result that we get after comparison does not have fields that do not have values in any of the records to be compared.

(d) Comparison can be performed only in record mode.Using Data Manager directly is very simple just right click on the record to be compare in record mode and select the option (compare with original or compare record) accordingly. A pop up will appear containing the values of the fields.

Figure showing Record Comparison Result.

For Comparing record via MDM Java API's we can use ComparisonRecordResultSet Command. We need to pass RecordResultSet to the constructor of this class. One important thing to keep in mind is: While creating RecordResultSet's object choose the constructor that also take information about repository schema other wise it will throw null pointer exception on creation of ComparisonRecordResultSet Object