Application of Duplicate Records detection Techniques to Duplicate Payments in a Real Business Environment

Databases are increasing in size at an exponential rate, especially with the business electronization and real-time economy. Processes that were once stored on paper are now stored in databases. Sometimes errors – such as data entry, incomplete information, and unstandardized formats from different data sources – can lead to the existence of more than one representation of the same object in a database. This paper presents the problem of duplicate records and their detection, and addresses the issue of one type of records in specific which is of great interest in the business world: that of duplicate payments. An application of record matching techniques to the database of a telecommunication company is used as an illustration.