Fuzzy Compare Two Fields

Question

Hi,

I need to fuzzy compare two fields to return a match score, exactly like what was described here: Solved: Comparing Records between two columns for similari... - Alteryx Community

The solution in that post works, but I have tens of thousands of rows of data so this solution is computationally infeasible. It appears that Alteryx doesn't just compare the fields for each row but instead compares all possible combinations of both fields regardless of the row and then filters on row IDs that are the same. So a lot of fuzzy matching gets done unnecessarily.

Is there a faster way to do this without having to compare all the rows against each other?

Thanks

ALT_2358 · Answer

Hi Luke

I tried the macro approach, but it's still extremely slow. Perhaps I've not set it up in the best way. I was able to do the same thing in Python, and the Python code runs significantly more quickly. However, I can't run the Python code in Alteryx Server, possibly due to my company's restrictions. I was hoping that Alteryx could do it without Python.

Please find the attached, which has a sample dataset included.

Many thanks

Fuzzy Compare Using Alteryx (Slow).yxzp

Luke_C · Answer

Hi @ALT_2358

You could probably accomplish this with a batch macro that processes each row at a time. Do you have some sample data to share?