Systems and methods are described that permit a user to configure an identification strategy at run time to facilitate user input of data. The identification strategy may include a parsing grammar and a search algorithm. The parsing grammar may be used to parse user input, and the search algorithm may be used to search a database for the user input. A configuring user may configure the parsing grammar at run time to accept data in a customized form to suit the user's input style. The search algorithm may be configured accordingly as well.