Re: How to achieve scalability

Salad, thats a nice function. What about a combination of this
function for producing 'short names', combined with a join / union to
a table with the masterlist of these names and using the SIMIL() score
as a threshold for deciding if the two entities are actually the same.
It should also be possibel to then just have a version of the query
that shows entities that are below the threshold and need manual
attention.

Place the results of both queries into 'staging areas' if necessary,
so that they can be reviewed by human eyes, then when accepted /
approved append / update them as necessary.

Just a passing thought. No query like the one the OP needs will ever
bee 100% reliable it seems, however by stepping through the problem
and letting the 'critical' decisions remain in human hands you can at
least minimise the risks as much as possible.

Cheers

The Frog