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JARO_WINKLER_SIMILARITY (Transact-SQL) preview

Applies to: SQL Server 2025 (17.x) Preview Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Managed Instance SQL database in Microsoft Fabric Preview

Note

As a preview feature, the technology presented in this article is subject to Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews.

Calculates a similarity value ranging from 0 (indicating no match) to 100 (indicating full match).

Note

  • JARO_WINKLER_SIMILARITY is currently in preview.
  • SQL Server support for JARO_WINKLER_SIMILARITY introduced in SQL Server 2025 (17.x) Preview.
  • JARO_WINKLER_SIMILARITY is available in Azure SQL Managed Instance with the SQL Server 2025 or Always-up-to-date update policy.

Syntax

JARO_WINKLER_SIMILARITY (
    character_expression,
    character_expression
) 

Arguments

character_expression

An alphanumeric expression of character data. character_expression can be a constant, variable, or column. The character expression cannot be of type varchar(max) or nvarchar(max).

Return value

int

Remarks

This function implements the Jaro-Winkler edit distance algorithm and calculates the similarity value.

Examples

The following example compares two words and returns the JARO_WINKLER_SIMILARITY value as a column, named Similarity.

SELECT 'Colour' AS WordUK, 
       'Color' AS WordUS, 
       JARO_WINKLER_SIMILARITY('Colour', 'Color') AS Similarity;

Returns:

WordUK WordUS Similarity
------ ------ -------------
Colour Color  97

For additional examples, see Example JARO_WINKLER_SIMILARITY.

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