Opposed to most other matching engines on the market, Actonomy's xMP platform is not simply based on 'complex queries' that are created to have a faster data selection. Actonomy's xMP is based on decision support technology, making it perfectly suitable for real time analysis of data sets.

Therefore, Actonomy xMP supports a set of analysis functions (accessible through a graphical user interface) that support the simulation of the matching process :

• Decision flow through sequential (and/or parallel) filters;
• Real time changes of parameters to measure the impact on the matching process.
• Workflow driven actions based on different steps in the decision process.

Intelligent decision making and matching

Having a decision making process in which many different parameters can influence the result is about selecting the appropriate information that has an influence and secondly making a trade-off between the different parameters within this information. Selecting a car, as an example, is about defining which parameters are relevant to you (color, price, delivery time, ...) and defining how important they are to you. Based on this, a decision can be made on what car to select.

However, the overall process is not always as easy as that and there are several reasons for that:

• It is not always clear which parameters will influence the decision;
• Parameters are not always exact;
• Parameters will influence each other;
• The process is often bi-directional : information is not always exact and your requirements are not well specified.

As a result, traditional 'query' based techniques to select information for your decision process are not providing accurate results for you. Therefore, matching is being used and it's goal is to select the most appropriate information even when an exact 'match' is not existing!

Matching is offering what is not possible with traditional queries: