Knight's Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services 24-Hour Trainer

Chapter 38

Using Data Quality Services

Data QualityServices(DQS) provides some tools and services to help improve data within your organization. DQS is a very large and complex topic. This lesson includes the most basic ideas, enough to get you started with the concepts. If this is an area of interest to you, there is much more to learn about this topic. The purpose of this lesson is to prepare you with basic data quality skills, so that you will understand the data quality–related task in the next lesson.

DQS is intended to help to assist you in the following areas:

• Completeness—Are data values missing? If you have 25,000 customers and only 15,000 valid e-mail addresses for them, your e-mail address field is 60 percent complete.
• Consistency—Are data values being used consistently? If Gen Mgr and GM are alternate terms that refer to the General Manager position, are position field values used consistently? (The answer is no.) Even though you know that the values refer to the same position, you must make the values consistent. This is important because you will use this data for comparison and aggregation. Use of inconsistent values provides inaccurate results.
• Conformity—If special formatting is required for certain fields, do the data values match the correct formatting? You can import data from several sources that store values with the same meaning in different ways. Consider the “gender” field. One source provides values of M and F. Another system uses 1 and 2. A third system ...