The game of numbers so far what we have studied is based on Boolean theory introduced by George Boole in his first book "The mathematical Analysis of Logic" in 1847.
The fundamental of Boolean theory is digital electronics that deals with completeness/incompleteness ( True / False , Yes / No , 1 / 0 ).
According to Boolean theory , the probability that a statement is correct will be either 100% or 0%.
In terms of master data => let's say retrieval of a master data entity from Database,
-> The user wants to retrieve a Product "Water Bottle" , if Database contains the product "Water Bottle" , it will return the result else no result.
The graph , The algebra , The algorithms took a new shape when Lotfi Zadeh introduced Fuzzy in 1965.
Boolean logic is based on one-valued logic i.e. 0/1 whereas Fuzzy logic is based on many-valued logic that can be any real number between 0 and 1.
It was identified that there are uncertain spaces which are missed with boolean logic ,and there is a way to identify that uncertain space as well using Fuzzy logic.
According to Fuzzy theory , the probability that a statement is correct can be 0 - 100% , the statement can be partially correct as well.
In terms of master data =>
The user does not know the name of a Product he is looking for, but has some rough idea,
So he might search for a Product "Watr Botl", where the Fuzzy search will return results containing "Water Bottle" depending on the fuzzy threshold*.
SAP provides the power of fuzzy search in SAP HANA and therefore SAP S/4 HANA - The next generation ERP suite inherits the power of Fuzzy search.
All SAP S/4 HANA CMD applications are powered with Fuzzy Search where if user wants to search for a Product , he is not expected to search for the exact Product name , instead fuzzy search will help him as assistant to look up for the desired Product.
In Traditional SAP ERP , there is an option to search with Product "*Screw*" which will return all results containing Screw but that is quite different from Fuzzy search.
*Fuzzy threshold -
The amount of approximation / uncertainity desired to handle is defined with fuzzy threshold.
