[Nick Oscar]

The same procurement can appear on an agency site, a central portal, and several feeds. Which fields can safely link those records without merging unrelated notices?

[Nick Oscar]

Accepted editorial answer

Start with identifiers, not title similarity. Compare the issuing organization, solicitation number, and portal notice ID first. Then check the notice type, posting date, deadline, place of performance, classification codes, attachments, and description.

The SAM.gov Opportunities API exposes fields such as notice ID, solicitation number, organization, dates, status, and deadline. Its public API returns the latest active version, while older versions are available through separate data services. This means two records can be versions of the same notice rather than separate opportunities.

When one source clearly mirrors another, keep one canonical record but retain each source URL, source ID, and timestamp. If the identifiers conflict or are missing, do not merge them automatically. Put the records in a review queue. A normalized title is useful for finding candidates, but it is not a safe primary key.

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