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Advanced SSIS Fuzzy Lookup and Fuzzy Grouping - SSIS

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The two fuzzy transformations within SSIS, Fuzzy Lookup and Fuzzy Grouping, deal with associating data through data similarity, rather than exact data matching. The “fuzzy” part of the transformation name refers to data coupling based on selected data mapping using defined similarity and confidence measurements. Here is a brief description of each:

Fuzzy Lookup: The Fuzzy Lookup Transformation takes input data from a Data Flow and matches it to a specified table within SQL Server joined across data similarity column matching. The Fuzzy Lookup is like the Lookup Transformation, except that the column mapping can be adjusted to evaluate data likeness and the output can be tuned to return one or more potential results.

Fuzzy Grouping: This transformation takes a single input from the Data Flow and performs a comparison with itself to try to identify potential duplicates in the data. The grouping doesn’t evaluate all the columns in the source input; it only searches for duplicates across the columns you select based on the similarity settings that you define.

This section begins with the Fuzzy Lookup Transformation by reviewing its general functionality. It then digs a little deeper to reveal how it works under the covers. The Fuzzy Grouping Transformation works very similarly to the Fuzzy Lookup Transformation.


SSIS Fuzzy Lookup

The very basic purpose of the Fuzzy Lookup is to match input data to a lookup table whose columns you are matching across that do not necessarily match exactly. The Fuzzy Lookup Transformation is therefore very similar to the Lookup Transformation, except you are not joining with identical values; you are joining with similar values. below screen shot shows the (regular) Lookup Transformation, whereby several columns are mapped to a lookup table and a key column is returned.

SSIS Fuzzy Lookup

The input data in above screen shot is from Excel, a common source of dirty data due to issues with data conversion, missing data, or typographical errors. The simple Data Flow in below screen shot shows that the Lookup has the error output configured to redirect missing rows; as you can see, seven rows do not match to the Lookup table when the Data Flow is executed.

Data Flow

To find the missing record matches for the seven rows, you can use the Fuzzy Lookup Transformation. The best way to use the Fuzzy Lookup is when you have a set of data rows that you have already tried matching with a Lookup, but there were no matches. The Fuzzy Lookup does not use cached data and requires SQL Server to help during the processing, so it is more efficient to take advantage of a cached Lookup to handle the large majority of records before using the Fuzzy Lookup.

Below screen shot shows the Fuzzy Lookup Transformation Editor. The first tab, Reference Table, requires you to select the reference table that the Fuzzy Lookup needs to match, just like the Lookup Transformation. Later in this section, you will see the advanced settings.

Fuzzy Lookup Transformation Editor

On the Columns tab, you need to join the matching columns from the input to the Lookup reference table. Because the purpose is to find matches, you can then determine which columns in the lookup reference table need to be added to the Data Flow. The Fuzzy Lookup example in below screen shot is identical to the Lookup mapping in above screen shot ((regular) Lookup Transformation), where the primary key column, CustomerID, is returned to the Data Flow.


Fuzzy Lookup example

The Fuzzy Lookup Transformation has a few advanced features (see the below screenshot) to help you determine what should be considered a match:

advanced features

  • For every input row, the “Maximum number of matches to output per lookup” option will limit the potential matches to the number that is set. The Fuzzy Lookup will always select the top matches ordered by similarity, highest to lowest.
  • The “Similarity threshold” option defines whether you want to limit the matches to only values above a defined likeness (or similarity). If you set this to 0, you will always get the same number of lookup rows per input row as defined in the “Maximum number of matches to output per lookup” setting.
  • Because the Fuzzy Lookup is matching on text, some custom features enable the Lookup to determine when to identify a separation in characters (like more than one word). These are the token delimiters.

In the example we are building, once the Fuzzy Lookup is configured a Union All is added to the Data Flow and the output of the Lookup and the Fuzzy Lookup are both connected to the Union All. The output of the Union All is then connected to the destination.

below screen shot shows the completed Data Flow with the execution results. The seven rows that didn’t match the Lookup Transformation have been successfully matched with the Fuzzy Lookup, and the data has been brought back together with the Union All.

In order to better understand how the Fuzzy Lookup is matching the data, you can add a Data Viewer to the output path in the Fuzzy Lookup. As below screen shot demonstrates, right-click on the path and select Enable Data Viewer.

Enable Data Viewer

The Fuzzy Lookup has added more than just the reference table’s lookup column, as shown in the Data Viewer output in below screen shot:

Data Viewer output

  • _Similarity: This is the overall similarity of the source input row to the match row that the Fuzzy Lookup found.
  • _Confidence: This is not about the current row but how many other rows are close in similarity. If other rows are identified as close in similarity, the confidence drops, because the Fuzzy Lookup is less confident about whether the match found is the right match.
  • _Similarity_[Column Name]: For every column used in the match , the Fuzzy Lookup includes the individual similarity of the input column to the match row in the reference table. These columns begin with “_Similarity_” and have the original column name as a suffix.

As you can see in the Data View output from Figure 10-11, the similarity of the matching rows varies between 91 and 96 percent. The columns on the right-hand side of Figure 10-11 indicate the degree of similarity between the matching columns. Notice that many of them have a value of 1, which indicates a perfect match. A value less than 1 indicates the percentage of similarity between the input and reference join.

Note that the confidence is in the 50 percent range. This is because most of the sample data is from matching cities and states, which increases the similarity of other rows and therefore reduces the confidence.

One final feature of the Fuzzy Lookup Transformation is the capability to define similarity thresholds for each column in the match. Referring back to previous screen shot(The Fuzzy Lookup Example), if you double-click on one of the relationship lines, it will open the Create Relationships dialog, shown in below screen shot.

Create Relationships dialog

In this example, the StateProvinceName has been set to an Exact Match type, which is a minimum similarity of 1. Therefore, the Fuzzy Lookup will identify a potential match between rows only when the StateProvinceName is identical for both the input row and the reference table.

The easiest way to understand how the Fuzzy Lookup Transformation works (behind the scenes) is to open the Fuzzy Lookup Transformation Editor, edit the reference table, and then check the “Store new index” checkbox, as below screen shot shows.

Store new index

The Fuzzy Lookup requires a connection to a SQL Server database using the OLE DB provider because the transformation uses SQL Server to compute the similarity. To see how this works, begin by using SSMS to connect to the server and database where the lookup table is located. Expand the Tables folder, as shown in below screen shot.

Tables folder

The Fuzzy Lookup has created a few tables. The FuzzyLookupMatchIndex tables contain the data in the reference table, tokenized for the Fuzzy Lookup operation. In addition, if you checked the “Maintain stored index” checkbox , you will also get a couple of additional tables that contain data for inserts and deletes from the reference table. Not shown are the indexes on the reference table, which keep the data updated.

Frequently Asked SSIS Interview Questions & Answers

below screen shot shows sample data from the FuzzyLookupMatchIndex table. The Token column contains partial data from the values for each row in the reference table. The ColumnNumber is the ordinal of the column from the input data set (basically, which column is being referenced in each row). The values in the Rids column look quite strange. This is because SSMS cannot display the binary data in text. However, this column contains the Row Identifiers (RIDs) for every row in the reference table that contains the same token. If you trace the Fuzzy Lookup during package execution, you will find that the input row is also tokenized and matched to the data in the Match Index table, which is how the engine determines the similarity.

Match Index table

As you may have guessed from looking at how the Fuzzy Lookup Transformation works, it can consume a lot of server resources. This is why you may want to handle the exact matches first using a standard Lookup Transformation.

Fuzzy Grouping

The Fuzzy Grouping Transformation is similar to the Fuzzy Lookup in that it uses the same approach to find matches and it requires SQL Server. Rather than reference an external table, however, the Fuzzy Grouping matches the input data to itself in order to find duplicates. This process is commonly referred to as de-duplication.

Below screen shot shows an example Data Flow that performs several common transformations. Data is imported from Excel and transformed in a few steps. Right before the destination, a Fuzzy Grouping is added to the Data Flow.

Fuzzy Grouping

When you edit the Fuzzy Grouping, you will find some similar settings to the Fuzzy Lookup. Note that on the Connection Manager tab, shown in below screen shot, the only property is the connection to SQL Server. This is because there is no reference table that the Fuzzy Grouping needs to join. It just needs the connection where it can store its temporary data.

Connection Manager tab

Each column in the input has two settings that you can set. The first is the checkbox (below screen shot shows a few columns selected). This determines whether the Fuzzy Grouping will use this column to identify duplicates. The Pass Through column enables columns to appear downstream even when they are not used in the identification of duplicates.


Another thing that above screen shot highlights is that the Fuzzy Grouping Transformation provides the same capability as the Fuzzy Lookup to set a minimum similarity on a column-by-column basis.

On the Advanced tab, shown in below screen shot, you can fine-tune the Fuzzy Grouping to specify the overall Similarity threshold. If a potential matching row does not meet this threshold, it is not considered in the de-duplication. You can also set the output columns.

Advanced tab

Just as in the Fuzzy Lookup, you can see the output by adding a Data Viewer to the output path from the Fuzzy Grouping. Below screen shot illustrates how the Fuzzy Grouping works. A _key_in column and a _key_out column are added to the Data Flow. When the Fuzzy Grouping identifies a potential match, it moves the row next to the potential match row. The first row key is shared in the _key_out column. The _key_in identifies where the rows originated.

Fuzzy Grouping works

As the example in Figure 10-20 shows, there are a couple of matches. LastName was misspelled in _key_in value of 6, but because the similarity _score is 95 percent, the engine determined it was a match (it was above the similarity threshold of 80 percent defined in Figure 10-19). In another couple of rows highlighted, the street address is slightly different.


The key to the Fuzzy Grouping is the _score column. If you wanted to just go with the Fuzzy Grouping results and de-duplicate your source, you would add a Conditional Split Transformation to the Data Flow and allow only rows through the Condition Split whose _score == 1 (the double equals is the expression language Boolean logic match check). Alternately, you could define custom expression logic to choose an alternate row.

As the preceding two sections have demonstrated, both the Fuzzy Lookup and the Fuzzy Grouping provide very powerful data cleansing features that can be used in a variety of data scenarios.

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Ravindra Savaram
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