See when people like you say stuff like this I get really worried! :crying:

The frunction is part of a record linkage application I'm developing. It joins a dataset on itself say on postcode and surname then individual elements of the duplicate pairs are compared and assigend scores for the name part, address, email etc...

This particualr function calculates the likelyhood of two records having the same name details. See XML below. This is saying that

IF Surname the same AND Firstname the same then the score will depend on the cmparison of middlename

But as you can see there are many combinations of this like

if Surname the same AND forename sounds the same then middlename outcome gives different score.

Now repeat this for when the surnames sounds the same and when surnames are approximately the same etc and this is how I ended up with so many IFs

How else to implement this without IF or CASE ststements?!

Just realised this is so rude.. me hijacking the thread for my own needs. Sorry!

<lastnames match="equal">

<firstnames match="equal">

<middlenames match="equal">sure</middlenames>

<middlenames match="both_empty">sure</middlenames>

<middlenames match="one_empty">sure</middlenames>

<middlenames match="approx">likely</middlenames>

<middlenames match="contains">likely</middlenames>

<middlenames match="unequal">possible</middlenames>

</firstnames>

<firstnames match="sounds_equal">

<middlenames match="equal">sure</middlenames>

<middlenames match="both_empty">likely</middlenames>

<middlenames match="one_empty">likely</middlenames>

<middlenames match="approx">possible</middlenames>

<middlenames match="contains">possible</middlenames>

<middlenames match="unequal">zero</middlenames>

</firstnames>