Method and apparatus for postal address matching

1. A method performed by one or more processing devices, the method comprising:

receiving a first postal address;

removing at least one component of the first postal address;

forming a token set from at least a portion of the first postal address from which the at least one component was removed, the token set containing at least one duplicate token;

removing the duplicate token from the token set;

creating a postal address signature from the token set having the duplicate token removed, wherein the postal address signature is a fuzzy-token based signature;

identifying a matching signature by comparing the postal address signature to at least one stored signature among a plurality of stored signatures;

identifying a second postal address corresponding to the matching signature; and

identifying a match by comparing the first postal address containing the at least one component and the second postal address.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one component of the first postal address is a street address, a postal code, or a combination thereof.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the postal code is one or more of: a zip code, a postcode, a codes postaux, a post code, an Eircode, a postal routing number, a Postal Index Number, a Codice di Avviamento Postale, a Codigo de Enderecamento Postal, a Postleitzahl, a postal zone code, or a postal district code.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the token set is formed at least in part from a street name, a city name, or a combination of the street name and the city name.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising correcting a misspelling in the first postal address prior to creating the postal address signature.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising standardizing, prior to creating the token set, a component in the first postal address.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the standardizing is done to a country-specific standard.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the postal address signature is a q-gram based signature and “q” is a number equal to two or greater than two, a Deletion-Based neighborhood generation algorithm-based signature, an A O(log n) Signature-Based String Matching Algorithm-based signature, an AdaptJoin algorithm-based signature, a VChunk algorithm-based signature, a PassJoin algorithm-based signature, a FastSS algorithm-based signature, an ExB: Exclusion-based string matching algorithm-based signature, a Part-Enum algorithm-based signature, a Partition-ED algorithm-based signature, or a Partition-NED algorithm-based signature.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising receiving the first postal address via a computer network, from at least one of: computer, a mobile device, a wearable device, or a cloud-based computer network.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the method is performed as at least a part of an address cleansing process, an address validating process, a data cleansing process, or a data integration process.

11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising weighting one or more tokens in the token set.

12. An apparatus comprising:

a processing device; and

memory storing instruction that are executable to cause the processing device to perform operations comprising:

receiving a first postal address;

removing at least one component of the first postal address;

forming a token set from at least a portion of the first postal address from which the at least one component was removed, the token set containing at least one duplicate token;

creating a postal address signature from the token set having the duplicate token removed, wherein the postal address signature is a fuzzy-token based signature;

identifying a matching signature by comparing the postal address signature to at least one stored signature among a plurality of stored signatures;

identifying a second postal address corresponding to the matching signature; and

identifying a match by comparing the first postal address containing the at least one component and the second postal address.

13. The apparatus of claim 12 , further comprising a computing device with which the processor is integrated.

14. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein the processing device comprises one or more of is a microprocessor, a microcontroller, a digital signal processor, a field programmable gate array, a programmable logic device, an application-specific integrated circuit, a controller, a non-generic special-purpose processor, a state machine, a gated logic device, a discrete hardware component, or a dedicated hardware finite state machine.

15. The apparatus of claim 12 , wherein the operations comprise standardizing, prior to creating the token set, a component in the first postal address.

16. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions that are executable to cause one or more processing devices to perform operations comprising:

receiving a first postal address;

removing at least one component of the first postal address;

forming a token set from at least a portion of the first postal address from which the at least one component was removed, the token set containing at least one duplicate token;

creating a postal address signature from the token set having the duplicate token removed, wherein the postal address signature is a fuzzy-token based signature;

identifying a matching signature by comparing the postal address signature to at least one stored signature among a plurality of stored signatures;

identifying a second postal address corresponding to the matching signature; and

identifying a match by comparing the first postal address containing the at least one component and the second postal address.

17. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 16 , wherein the at least one component of the first postal address is a street address, a postal code, or a street address and a postal code.

18. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 16 , wherein identifying the match further comprises comparing the at least one removed component to a corresponding component of the second postal address.

19. The method of claim 16 , further comprising correcting a misspelling in the first postal address prior to creating the postal address signature.

20. The method of claim 16 , further comprising standardizing, prior to creating the token set, a component in the first postal address.