The Foundation of Unified Data

Master Data Management sits at the intersection of data quality and data governance. At its core, MDM is about creating a single, authoritative view of critical business entities — customers, products, suppliers — by matching and merging records scattered across systems. This article breaks down the algorithms and strategies that make it work.

Key Topics Covered

  • Deterministic matching — exact and rule-based approaches for high-confidence record linking.
  • Probabilistic matching — Soundex, Metaphone, Jaro-Winkler, and Levenshtein distance for fuzzy matching.
  • Merge strategies — survivorship rules, golden record construction, and conflict resolution.
  • Data cleansing and standardization as prerequisites for effective matching.
  • How MDM principles support governed master data operations.