Understanding merge party survivorship rules

The merge party survivorship rules define the actions that InfoSphere® MDM takes when merging and collapsing parties.

Merge party survivorship rules are configured in the InfoSphere MDM external rules tables: EXTRULE, EXTRULEIMLEM, and JAVAIMPL.

Table 1. Merge party survivorship rules
Rule ID	Java Rule Class	Description
6	com.dwl.tcrm.externalrule.PartyUpdateExtRule	Provides merge behavior rules for cases in which a party already exists in the system.
35	com.dwl.tcrm.externalrule.SuspectAddPartyRule	Defines the action to take with guaranteed duplicates. Note: Modify this rule to include your own criteria in the filter list.
38	com.dwl.tcrm.externalrule.CollapsePartiesWithRules	Defines the action to take when collapsing two parties based on explicit actions initiated through InfoSphere MDM transactions such as collapseParties, collapsePartiesWithRules, comparativeCollapseParties, and previewCollapseParties.
119	com.dwl.tcrm.externalrule.CollapseMultiplePartiesRule	Defines the action to take when collapsing more than two parties based on explicit actions initiated through InfoSphere MDM transactions such as collapseMultipleParties, comparativeCollapseMultipleParties, and previewCollapseMultipleParties.

There are two main scenarios that call the merge party survivorship rules into action:

An attempt to add a new party turns into an update.

When an attempt is made to add a new party and InfoSphere MDM identifies a suspected duplicate that is a guaranteed (A1) match, then the Add transaction may instead result in an Update action to an existing party record (assuming your system has not been configured to persist duplicates).

Two rules play a role in this process:

Rule 35, com.dwl.tcrm.externalrule.SuspectAddPartyRule
Rule 6, com.dwl.tcrm.externalrule.PartyUpdateExtRule

Parties are explicitly collapsed by a data steward or evergreening process.

There are several transactions that support collapsing party information, such as:

collapseMultipleParties
collapseParties
collapsePartiesWithRules
comparativePreviewCollapseMultipleParties
comparativePreviewCollapseParties
previewCollapseMultipleParties
previewCollapseParties

One of two rules plays a role in the Collapse process, depending on whether two or more than two parties are involved in the collapse action:

Rule 38, com.dwl.tcrm.externalrule.CollapsePartiesWithRules
Rule 119, com.dwl.tcrm.externalrule.CollapseMultiplePartiesWithRules

Last updated: 23 October 2014