>One of the problems that may exist in my database is a person having their name spelled differently, but having same SSN. In that case how would I handle this situation? Or should it even matter? Thanks
>
>Nick Patel

It shouldn't matter, because this really shouldn't happen :)

But since it does happen, it does matter. It will result in more records for this person than you want. So would case differences, but those can be corrected by Upper() on the name. This situation isn't as easy, since the name misspellings can be of such a wide variety.

Since you can have this situation, I'd also be concerned about the flip side - same person, mis-typed ssn.

To handle this, you could do a couple of things

1. Recode this part of the app so it never happens again. :) e.g., if they look up the ssn, pull in the name at the same time
2. Change the query to join to the primary ssn/names table for the name. [if you don't have a primary ssn/names table, then normalize your data to have one]
3. Update the data with correct, consistent spellings.