On an SAP Report selection screen, the user is expected to pass part of the material description. On executing, list of materials having a certain keyword in its description is displayed with some more related information like Stock On Hand, Cross Plant Status etc. Matt wants to know what all materials are having the word ‘Shaving Cream’ in its description. However, he misspells and keys in ‘Shavin Cream’ instead. Search fails. This can set some alarms running especially if Matt wants to place a huge order but decides to go for another business because our search failed and he assumed that we don’t sell Shaving Cream.

Fuzzy Search allows Matt to write ‘Shavin Cream’ instead of ‘Shaving Cream’ and still get the right answer.

Fuzzy Search allows for error and focuses on getting results matching to a certain level of approximation rather than cent percent accuracy. In other words, it is an error-tolerant or fault-tolerant search mechanism. It includes results with additional or missing characters provided it is within a level of tolerance defined by Fuzzy Score.

One of the con is that sometimes Fuzzy Search can result in irrelevant results. Identifying an optimal value of the Fuzzy Score is necessary to mitigate such concerns.

~S