jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Sun May 27 12:55:13 CDT 2007
I have a situation where I might have several data records in a table (the big 700 field table) that are about the same person / address but have different data in some of the other fields. These records represent answers to surveys and so if a person answered three surveys, the person could have three records in the database. I need to merge the data from the three records into a single record, and eventually delete the other two. I have developed a field that represents the SHA1 hash of the address, zip5, zip4, lastname and firstname. I am running some tests to see whether this hash is unique across 50 million records (unique to that name / address) but I suspect that it will be. Once I determine that it is, then I can use that single field as a single "person identifier" field. So I need pointers how to "merge" the data from one record into a second record, only merging fields where there is legitimate data, and not overwriting fields where there is already data. John W. Colby Colby Consulting www.ColbyConsulting.com