As part of working with a client on some technical aspects of their master data management program, I recently participated in a review of some of the record matching and linkage strategies being applied to consolidate data from a collection of source data systems. While listening to the conversations during the meetings, it occurred to me that without a reasonable understanding of how record linkage works, it is difficult to assess the suitability of an algorithm, business rules, or blocking strategies associated with any of the major duplicate analysis, matching engine, or MDM tools.

I suggested to the client that it would be worthwhile to know as much about linkage as the vendors do, and recommended Herzog, Scheuren, and Winkler's recent book on record linkage, "Data Quality and Record Linkage Techniques." This book is a really good resource to get an understanding of what record linkage is, how it works, and why it is important to a master data management activity, and the authors are well-known reserachers in the area of record linkage. Definitely worth reading, let me know what you think.