Question

The workflow is like this:

1. I receive a scan of a coupon with data (firstname, lastname, zip, city + misc information) on it.
2. Before I create a new customer, I have to search the database if the customer might exist already.

Now my question: What’s the best way to find an existing customer, when there is no unique ID available?

PS: I do have a unique ID in the database, just not on the coupons we receive 😉

Answer 1

We are using the Levenshtein distance algorithm to check users for duplication. However we have quite strict rules to enter the data itself, so we have to check only for misstyping, case differences and such.