STEP 2 (SQL Server): Select SQL Server Table

 

Select the SQL Server Table you want to import the data from.  Sample data will be shown in the results grid.

 

 

When would you need to use Views rather than Tables?

There are times when you need to create a SQL Server View of your data before it can be imported into the Duplicate Record Remover:

• Relational foreign-key table data: The tool uses a single flat-file (also known as de-normalized data) representation of your records.  However it is common in a SQL Server source to have relational data that needs to be included in the duplicate examination process, for example Addresses and/or Phone Numbers may reside in foreign-key tables away from the core Person table that you want to de-duplicate.  It is essential to have this address and phone number data in order to determine which records are similar or not.  So you will need to create a SQL Server view of your data that flattens (or pivots) the data into a single table representation of each person.
• Very large numbers of fields: You might have a large amount of fields in your source data table that you want to exclude from your merging operations – so you may want to create a view to select only those fields you want included in the processing.  Be warned that when you exclude such fields you risk losing data within them when a record is deleted as part of a merge – so only exclude fields that contain non-critical data.  You should conduct some trial runs and testing to ensure all fields are handled correctly during a de-duping process.
• Unusual field names: The field names can be edited within the Setup Wizard to something more friendly to users (See the Useful Tip under Step 3: Specify Data Types) – or you can create a view to rename some fields to something more meaningful.
• Invalid field types: Because the duplicate tool has no way of merging binary data types to ensure there is no loss of data during the merge, it disallows the importing of such types in this step.  To avoid such errors you may need to create a view of your source data that excludes these field types.

 

Next Step: STEP 3: Specify Data Types

 

 

Related Topics

Setup Wizard