Method and System for Indexing Information about Entities with Respect to Hierarchies

• US 20090198686A1
• Filed: 04/10/2009
• Published: 08/06/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/22/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: Initiate Systems, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: Ellard, Scott, Cushman, James B. II
• Granted Patent: US 8,510,338 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/215 Improving data quality; Data cleansing, e.g. de-duplication, removing invalid entries or correcting typographical errors

Abstract

Systems and methods for indexing, associating or compositing data records and hierarchies from various information sources are disclosed. Embodiments of the present invention may provide the ability to link data records and thus to link data records to known hierarchies of data records. More specifically, embodiments of the present invention may provide the capability to associate data records in varying information sources and to thereby associate incoming data record with existing data records or existing data hierarchies such that an incoming data record may not only be associated with an existing data record comprising information about the same entity but may additionally be associated with other members of the data hierarchy in the same manner as the existing data record. In addition to associating an incoming data record with an existing data record and incorporating the incoming data record into an existing data hierarchy, embodiments of the present invention may provide the capability of reconciling an incoming data hierarchy to which an incoming data record belongs with an existing data hierarchy belongs such that the two data hierarchies may be composited.

Claims

1. A method for associating data records, comprising:

receiving a data record;

identifying a set of candidate data records based on a comparison between a set of existing data records and the received data record;

scoring each of the set of candidate data records, wherein the score of each of the candidate data records corresponds to a likelihood that the first data record and the candidate data record comprise information on an entity; and

associating the received data record with a first candidate record of the set of candidate record if the score of the first candidate record is greater than a first threshold, wherein the first candidate record is in a first data hierarchy such that the first candidate data record has a first set of hierarchical associations with a first set of related data records and the received data record is associated with the first candidate record such that the related data record data has the first set of hierarchical associations with the first set of related data records.