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In this example of PowerSearch, a user is trying to find a person in the database. They searched the database with many incorrect pieces of information, but still found who they were looking for.
The user was looking for a Bill Meyers who lived on Fifth Avenue in NY, NY. They provided zip codes, phone numbers, and an email address. All of those were incorrect pieces of information, but they were still enough to find the record.
This is a classic example of how difficult it can be to find what you are looking for in a database. The user entered all of the information he knew, and without PowerSearch, he would not have found what he was looking for. Here are the tools that PowerSearch used to locate the record:
Column | User Input | Actual Data | PowerSearch Technique |
---|---|---|---|
First Name | Bill | William | Synonym list of given names |
Last Name | Meyers | Myers | Phonetic search |
Address | 825 Fifth Avenue | 825 5th Ave | Synonym list of postal abbreviations |
City | NY | New York | Synonyn list of city abbreviations |
Zip Code | 10022 | 10021 | Geographic search for nearby zip codes |
Area Code | 917 | 212 | Synonym list of shared area codes |
Phone Number | 755-4686 | 775-4866 | Transposition and incorrect digits |
E-mail Address | wmeyers@med.cornell.edu | wmyers@med.cornell.edu | Misspelling search |
PowerSearch has a wide variety of tools that can be combined to help find data. Custom synonym lists and misspelling searches are most commonly used, but there are many other tools to choose from. PowerSearch also lets you develop your own synonym lists that are appropriate for your database.
See also: