Computational efficiency

Abstract

As the sensitive databases held by many organisations are getting larger, linking them can become computationally more challenging. Techniques known as blocking, indexing, and filtering have been developed and are being used to make linkage techniques more scalable. In this chapter we describe a variety of such techniques, as well as methods for linking large sensitive databases on modern parallel computing platforms and distributed environments. We also discuss scalability aspects when multiple (more than two) databases are to be linked, and the challenges involved when many, possibly hundreds or even thousands, of databases need to be linked.