Completing pair reviews in IBM Master Data Management

Review record pairs to help train the IBM Master Data Management matching algorithm. During a pair review, a data steward compares records to determine whether they are a match.

Required permissions
To complete a pair review task, you must be a member of the DataSteward user group for the IBM Master Data Management service.

Before you can complete a pair review, a data engineer must request a review from the algorithm tuning page. Each pair review request prompts IBM Master Data Management to generate pairs and create a new pair review task. For information about requesting a pair review, see Customizing and strengthening your matching algorithm.

When a pair review is complete, IBM Master Data Management analyzes the responses and recommends adjustments to your matching algorithm's weights and matching thresholds. Data engineers can also choose to include partially completed pair review tasks when generating tuning recommendations. The more pairs you review, the better the tuning recommendations will be. A data engineer can then decide whether to apply the recommendations.

When you are working with governed data on the pair review screens, some attribute values might be masked by a data protection rule. For more information about how IBM Master Data Management handles governed catalogs, see Working with governed data in IBM Master Data Management.

To complete a pair review task:

  1. From the Master data navigation menu, click the Pair review icon pair review icon.

    You can have more than one active pair review in progress, and data engineers can choose to include partial pair review results when generating tuning recommendations.

  2. On the Pair review page, use the selection panel to locate the pair review tasks that you want to work on. Filter pair review tasks based on:

    • Status: Active or completed.
    • Entity type: The specific entity type matching algorithm that the pair review applies to.

    The newest task in the selection panel is tagged with Most Recent.

  3. Click a pair review task in the selection panel to open it in the working panel. Review the task details, such as the date the task was created, the number of pairs reviewed, and the total number of pairs in the review.

  4. Click Review pairs to start or continue reviewing the record pairs in this task.

  5. For each pair of records, compare the attribute values to determine whether the two records refer to the same entity. To help you to identify discrepencies between the two records, the system automatically highlights the differences in attributes and fields.

    If an attribute includes multiple fields, expand the row in the comparison table to view all of the available data.

  6. For each pair, choose the best option:

    • Match
    • Unsure
    • Not a match
    Tip: At any time, you can pause the review by clicking Pause review. Return to where you left off by clicking Review pairs again.

    After you review and categorize all pairs in the review, you'll be shown a message thanking you for your efforts.

  7. Click Complete review to close the review.

IBM Master Data Management uses your responses to generate tuning recommendations for a data engineer to review and apply.

Learn more