Adaptive matching of similar data in a data repository to determine if two or more data items are related in accordance with configurable criteria. Matches are adapted by learning and presenting appropriate match criteria based on previous user input. The system can merge the data items into one master data item, group similar items and perform further processing based on the result. The configurable match criteria presented to a user are adapted by the system based on previous interactions of the system with users. Matching is performed by selecting data items to match, removing frequently used strings, normalizing data, tokenizing multi-word data items, assigning weights to each token, calculating a score using the assigned weights, generating groups of similar records, assigning thresholds for match levels. Adapting choices of match criteria for a user based on past interaction allows for rapid match creation and match maintenance that optimizes data integrity across an enterprise.