Dec 27 2015

Song List from CustomsForge in Excel format

Category: � Administrator @ 20:05

This post came about since I've been trying to make better use of a guitar and Rocksmith 2014.

CustomsForge is the place for songs outside the paid downloads path and I've wanted to be able to search and hold onto a list of songs that I might like or eventually play.

So another use for Fiddler and dealing with data from sites that have no API would be to pull your own list using GetWebRequest.

Having done this previously against other sites I thought it might prove helpful to others who want a local Excel or printed copy of the list as of the beginning of December 2015.

Here' the link:

http://1drv.ms/1OUC9Id

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: , , ,

Jun 28 2014

Comparing String Values for Similarities

Category: C# | SQL Server � Administrator @ 12:41

Many moons ago I embarked on a proof-of-concept project to see if I could use SQL Server to perform a matching process.

It was successful but I still had a lingering suspicion that the underlying algorithm (Levenshtein) used to determine the sameness between human full names was less than optimal.  So what ensued was a period where I would look around the web, once in a while, to see if I missed something. 

I can't tell you how many algorithms I researched, converted to C# and tested.  Don't ask me why, but anyone who starts with Levenshtein will most likely never find this algorithm since so many others like Levenshtein vie for attention.

I finally found what I was looking for purely by accident:

Strike-A-Match: http://www.catalysoft.com/articles/StrikeAMatch.html

and kudos to the paste bin for the C# version: http://pastebin.com/EfcmR3Xx#

So now if you ever need to compare human full names whether they be in any order like:

  • last name, first name compared to first name, last name

Strike-A-Match will do the trick. Take a look at this comparison of a human name: "Jimi Hendrix" to "Hendrix Jimi"

Using Strike-A-Match will compute that these two are exactly equivalent.

Enough said.

I embedded this into A SQLCLR function and it works like a charm.

Levenshtein and all your brethren really don't get the job done when all you really want to do is compare for similarity.

The web has the brightest ideas but try to look in all the dark corners.

Tags: , ,