Deterministic matching is a method of record linkage that relies on exact matching criteria. This means that records are considered a match if certain key fields (e.g., name, Social Security Number) have exactly the same values. Exact string match is a straightforward example of deterministic matching, where the strings in specific fields must be identical for a match to be declared. Other methods like sorted neighborhood, regional frequency, editing distance, and phonetic matching are probabilistic or heuristic approaches that allow for some degree of variation or error in the data.
References:
* DAMA-DMBOK2 Guide: Chapter 10 - Master and Reference Data Management
* "Entity Resolution and Information Quality" by John R. Talburt