Databases have come a long way since they were first developed. Although traditional database infrastructures allow large volumes of data to be searched comparatively quickly, they have tended to offer precious little flexibility. In contrast, the fuzzy logic at the heart of the latest matching solutions not only allows flexible searches to be conducted, it also prevents the erroneous exclusion of valid records. Rather than being selected or rejected on the basis of a yes/no response, records are assigned a probability score (and ranked accordingly). This article explains the latest state of play in the world of databases.