Interface MultiMatcher<E>

Type Parameters:
E - the type of the elements being matched.
All Known Implementing Classes:
MultiMatcher.Default

public interface MultiMatcher<E>
Logic for bidirectionally and exclusively linking all matching elements from two collections according to equality and/or sufficient similarity.

Exclusviely means each element in both collections can at most be linked with one element from the other collection. Bidirectionally means the link between two elements always has two directions. If element A is linked to element B, element B is inherently linked to element A as well.

Equality and similarity are defined by Equalator and Similator functions that can be passed at creation time. All values controlling the matching algorithm can be optionally configured in the factory class if the default configuration is not desired. Additionally, a callback function for deciding found matches with questionable similarity can be injected.

This is a powerful general purpose means of building associations of two sets of similar but not equal elements.
A very simple use case is the formal recognition of a changed table column structure (for which this class was originally developed).

For example given the following two hypothetical definitions (old and new) of column names:

Old:

  • Name
  • Firstname
  • Age
  • Address
  • Freetext
  • Email
  • OtherAddress
and

New:
  • firstname
  • lastname
  • age
  • emailAddress
  • postalAddress
  • noteLink
  • newColumn1
  • someMiscAddress
When using a case insensitive modified Levenshtein Similator (see Levenshtein.substringSimilarity(java.lang.String, java.lang.String)) the algorithm produces the following associations:
 firstname       -1.00- Firstname
 lastname        -0.75- Name
 age             -1.00- Age
 emailAddress    -0.71- Email
 postalAddress   -0.77- Address
 noteLink        [new]
 newColumn1      [new]
 someMiscAddress -0.56- OtherAddress
                      X Freetext