Dedup and Transitivity
Because the Dedup algorithm takes many data elements into account when matching records, it is not fully transitive (if A equals B and B equals C, then A must equal C) and may not create a group for records A, B, and C even if the transitive rule of equality applies to the records. For example, transitivity is not supported in the following scenario:
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Record B is added to the database first and no match is found
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Record C is added to the database and no match is found
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Record A is added to the database, and if it matches either record B or record C, the matching process will stop and create either of the following:
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group AB and a single record C
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group AC and a single record B
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the Dedup Test Utility checks if two records match based on the data, not what is actually matched and deduped in the database. In the above scenario, it will show that record A equals record B, record A equals records C, and record B is not equal to record C.