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Search Rules
Overview
With fuzzy search in SAP HANA, you can search for structured database content that is similar to the user input.
In this case, the user input and the records in the database are nearly the same but differ in their spelling (for
example, typing errors) or contain additional information (for example, additional or missing terms).
Among the use cases of fuzzy search on structured data, there is the prevention of duplicate records. New
database records can be checked for similar and already existing records in real time, just before the new record
is saved.
For example, before saving a new customer to the database, the application checks for similar customers that
may be duplicates of the newly entered customer. The application does some searches and then presents to the
user any existing customers that are similar to the user input. The user then decides whether to create a new
customer (because the records presented are similar, but not really duplicates) or to accept one of the existing
customers and continue with this customer record.
The searches performed by the application are defined by business rules that define when two customers are
similar. For example, two customers may be considered similar by the application as soon as one of the following
conditions is true:
1. The customers' names and addresses are similar.
2. The customers' last names and addresses are identical but the first names are different (may be persons
living in the same household).
3. The customers' names are similar and the dates of birth are identical.
These rules can be hardcoded in the application by writing three SELECT statements that do the three searches
defined above. Whenever the requirements for the search rules change, the application code has to be changed,
tested and deployed to the productive system. This may be costly in terms of time and development resources
needed.
Alternatively, the application can use search rules to store the rules as a configuration object in the SAP HANA
database. Instead of embedding the rules in SELECT statements that are part of the application code, the
application has to call a database procedure only to process all rules defined in the configuration object.
SAP HANA Developer Guide
Enabling Search
P U B L I C
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