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Merge – Combine Files

Files with different layouts and formats can be combined into a new data file. It's called a “merge”.

Merging can be useful for several reasons such as:

• finding duplicates between a number of files
• preparing data to be imported into a new database
• achieving economies of scale by performing the same tasks on multiple files at the same time

During the merge, our software can handle quite a number of different situations in terms of “dirty data” and will perform certain standardizations automatically.

Sample:

File - A:     Name: Mr John Smith Jr Addr: 123 Any Street CityProv: Van B.C. Postal: v7v 7v7 Tel: 604-988-9999

File - B:     Name: Krieger, Axel Addr: 456 Any Street City: N Vancouver Prov: B C Postal: V7J7J4

Merged Results:

File - A:     Name Prefix: Mr First Name: John Last Name: Smith Name Suffix: Jr Street: 123 Any Street City: Vancouver Prov: BC Postal: V7V 7V7 Tel: 604-988-9999

File - B:     Name Prefix:   First Name: Axel Last Name: Krieger Name Suffix:   Street: 456 Any Street City: North Vancouver Prov: BC Postal: V7J 7J4 Tel:

What changed?

File-A:

• Name is broken down into parts.
• “Van” becomes “Vancouver”... we have a list of common city abbreviations and misspellings which gets applied against your data.
• “B.C.” is recognized as a Canadian province and is stripped from the CityProv field. It is then standardized to the 2 digit province code “BC” and placed in the Prov field.
• The postal code is converted to upper case.

File-B:

• Name is broken down into parts.
• “N Vancouver” becomes “North Vancouver”.
• “B C” is recognized as a Canadian province and is standardized to 2 characters.
• The postal code is reformatted with a space.

Generally speaking, we usually run all files we receive through our merge program; even if it's just one file. We've got all sorts of tricks up our sleeves to help with problematic data.