Managing master data by using IBM Match 360

Use the IBM Match 360 with Watson service on IBM Cloud Pak for Data to consolidate data from the disparate sources that fuel your business and establish a single, trusted, 360-degree view of your customers.

IBM Match 360 helps you to resolve data records across different sources to give you a clearer view of each customer. Load record data from systems across your enterprise into IBM Match 360 and run matching algorithms to consolidate that data by creating trusted master data entities. After you match your data, IBM Match 360 shows statistics and graphs to help business users to analyze and explore your master data.

IBM Match 360 is a key part of the Cloud Pak for Data as a Service data fabric solution, specifically the Data governance use case. For information about Data governance, including tutorials to help get you up and running, see Data governance use case. To complete the tutorial that covers using IBM Match 360, see Data governance tutorial: Configure a 360-degree view.

Required services: IBM Match 360 with Watson
Supplemental services: IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog
Related services: Watson Studio; DataStage
Data format: Record data: CSV, TSV, or PSV (delimited); Data models: JSON
Data size: Any

The IBM Match 360 service includes two connected and complementary user experiences: master data configuration and master data explorer.

IBM Match 360 user experiences
IBM Match 360 user experience	User group permissions	Actions
Master data configuration	DataEngineer	Prepare and configure master data: - Configure the IBM Match 360 service's master data configuration asset. - Upload data assets or connect data sources. - Refine the generated data model. - Map data into the model. - Run the IBM Match 360 service's powerful matching capability to create master data entities. - Configure and tune the matching algorithm to meet your organization's requirements.
Master data explorer	DataSteward	Search, view, analyze, add, edit, and export master data entities and records.
Master data explorer	EntityViewer (business user)	Search, view, and analyze master data entities and records.
Pair review	DataSteward DataEngineer	Review pairs of records to help train and tune the matching algorithm.

In this topic:

Prerequisites
Accessing the service
Learn more

Prerequisites

To use the full capabilities of IBM Match 360, you must:

Have the IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog service
Associate a catalog with your IBM Match 360 service instance

Without Watson Knowledge Catalog, key IBM Match 360 capabilities such as profiling, automapping, data quality workflows, and data governance will not work. Other features of the IBM Match 360 service will function normally.

Before you can match data using IBM Match 360, you need to create a project.

Accessing the service

Before attempting to access the service, ensure that you have an appropriate service instance role. For details, see Giving users access to IBM Match 360.

There is more than one way to access the IBM Match 360 service:

From the Cloud Pak for Data home page navigation menu, select Data > Master data.
From the Your services card on the home page, click the service name associated with your IBM Match 360 service instance.

You can also connect to and work with your master data by using the IBM Match 360 REST APIs. For more information, see the API reference documentation in the IBM Cloud API and SDK reference library.

Learn more

For more information about using the IBM Match 360 with Watson service and related API, see the following topics:

Parent topic: Integrating and preparing data