{"id":3604,"date":"2023-08-30T13:07:42","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T13:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businessyield.com\/tech\/?p=3604"},"modified":"2023-08-30T13:07:45","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T13:07:45","slug":"data-profiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessyield.com\/tech\/technology\/data-profiling\/","title":{"rendered":"DATA PROFILING: What It Is, Processes, Tools & Best Practices","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"
Without data profiling, or analyzing source data for substance and quality, data processing and analysis are not possible. It is becoming more vital as data sizes grow and cloud computing becomes the norm for IT infrastructure. You need to profile massive amounts of data but are short on time or money. Read on to learn more about data profiling tools and how to make use of them. Some examples are also added to the article for better understanding of it all.<\/p>
Enjoy the ride!<\/p>
Data profiling is the practice of investigating, evaluating, and synthesizing information. Data quality issues, risks, and general trends can thus be more easily identified thanks to this process’s output of a high-level overview. The results of data profiling also provide invaluable information that businesses can use to their advantage.<\/p>
Data profiling, to be more precise, is the process of evaluating the reliability and accuracy of information. The analytical algorithms find the mean, lowest, maximum, percentile, and frequency of a dataset to analyze it thoroughly. Metadata such as frequency distributions, key relationships, foreign key candidates, and functional dependencies are then uncovered by the analysis. Finally, it takes all of this data into account to show you how well those elements correspond to your company’s expectations and aims.<\/p>
Common yet expensive mistakes in consumer databases can also be remedied via data profiling. Null values (unknown or missing values), values that shouldn’t be there, values with an unusually high or low frequency, values that don’t fit expected patterns, and values outside the normal range are all examples of these errors.<\/p>
Data profiling can be broken down into three categories:<\/p>
Checking the data for mathematical errors (such as a missing value or an incorrect decimal place) and making sure the data is consistent and presented correctly. Structure discovery aids in determining the quality of data structure, such as the proportion of incorrectly formatted phone numbers. <\/p>
The process of inspecting data record by record in search of mistakes. Data errors, such as missing area codes or invalid email addresses, can be discovered with the use of content discovery.<\/p>
Learning the interconnections between data elements. Key associations in a database, or cell or table references in a spreadsheet, are two such examples. When importing or merging linked data sources, it is critical to keep the connections between the data sets intact.<\/p>
Data profiling includes not only types but also approaches that can be applied to validating data, keeping track of dependencies, and other similar tasks, regardless of the specific method being utilized. The following are some of the more popular ones:<\/p>
Column profiling is a technique that counts how often a specific value appears in each column by scanning the entire column. You can use this data to spot trends and common values.<\/p>
Key analysis and dependency analysis are the two components of cross-column profiling. The purpose of key analysis is to locate potential primary keys in table columns. Finding patterns or connections in a dataset is the goal of dependency analysis. Collectively, these steps expose intercellular relationships within the same table.<\/p>
To establish connections between fields in several databases, cross-table profiling uses foreign key analysis. As a result, you may see interdependencies more clearly and identify disparate data sets that can be mapped together to speed up research. In addition to revealing redundant information, cross-table profiling can reveal syntactic or semantic discrepancies between linked datasets.<\/p>
Data rule validation is a process that ensures data values and tables follow predetermined rules for data storage and presentation. The tests give engineers insight into weak points in the data so they can strengthen them.<\/p>
There are a variety of situations in which data profiling can help businesses better understand and manage their data. The following are some examples of data profiling:<\/p>
Your company merges with an industry rival in this example. You can now mine a whole new trove of information for previously unattainable insights and untapped markets. However, you must first combine this information with what you already have.<\/p>
New data assets and their interdependencies can be better understood with the help of a data profile. The data team can then attempt to standardize the data’s format after data profiling reveals where it differs from the old data and where duplicates exist between the two systems. The time has come to combine and standardize the data for use.<\/p>
When a company builds a data warehouse, its goal is to centralize and standardize data from many sources so that it can be quickly accessed and analyzed. If the data is of low quality, though, simply collecting it in one place won’t help. Poor information results in subpar judgment.<\/p>
The data quality in a data warehouse can be monitored with the help of data profiling. It can also be used before or during the data intake process to ensure the data’s integrity and compliance with data rules as information is gathered, generally in an ETL process. Now that you have gathered all of your organization’s data in one place, you can make decisions with confidence.<\/p>
The following are basic data profiling techniques:<\/p>
Finds the natural keys, which are the unique numbers in each column that can help with inserts and updates. Useful for tables that don’t have headings.<\/p>
Identifies information that is missing or unknown. Default value assistance for ETL architects.<\/p>
Facilitates the choice of a suitable data type and size for the intended database. It also makes it possible to optimize efficiency by setting column widths to the exact lengths required by the data.<\/p>
Advanced data profiling techniques:<\/p>
Use zero-based, blank-value, or null-analysis to guarantee that crucial values are consistently available. Also useful for locating ETL and analysis-related orphan keys.<\/p>
verification of connections between related datasets, including one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many. This aids BI tools in making the appropriate inner or outer connections.<\/p>
Validates the correctness of the format of data fields, such as emails, to ensure they may be used. The fields required for outbound communication (email, phone, and physical address) are crucial.<\/p>
Data profiling is a time-consuming and manual process, but it may be automated with the right software to facilitate large-scale data projects. You cannot have a data analytics stack without them. The following are some tools you can use for data profiling:<\/p>
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When it comes to open-source data integration and data profiling tools, many developers turn to Talend Open Studio. It’s great for batch or real-time data integration and ETL processes.<\/p>
This software has several useful functions, including data management and purification, text field analysis, fast data integration from any source, and more. The ability to improve matching with time-series data is one of the distinctive selling points of this product. Moreover, the Open Profiler has a user-friendly interface that displays the profiling results for each data element in the form of graphs and tables.<\/p>
If you’re looking for an Open-Source, plug-and-play Data Profiling Tool, look no further than Quadient DataCleaner. One of the most common Data Profiling Tools is Quadient DataCleaner, which is used for data gap detection, completeness analysis, and data wrangling.<\/p>
Users of Quadient DataCleaner have the option of performing Data Enrichment in addition to their routine cleansing procedures. In addition to ensuring quality, the technology also provides clear visualizations of findings in the form of reports and dashboards. <\/p>
The public version of this program is freely available to anyone. However, the cost of premium versions with additional features is given upon request and is based on the specifics of your use case and company needs.<\/p>
Every data issue can be addressed with Open Source Data Quality and Profiling. Data Profiling, Data Preparation, Metadata Discovery, Anomaly Discovery, and other data management tasks may all be accomplished with this tool’s high-performance, comprehensive data management platform.<\/p>
Data Governance, Data Enrichment modification, Real-time Alerting, etc. are only some of the features that have been added to the original Data Quality and Preparation application. This program now also works with Hadoop, allowing for the transfer of files within the Hadoop Grid, facilitating the efficient processing of large datasets.<\/p>
OpenRefine is an Open Source program for cleaning up dirty data that was formerly known as Google Refine and Freebase Gridworks. It is a community-driven Data Profiling tool that first saw the light of day in 2010, and since then its developers have worked hard to stay up with evolving user needs.<\/p>
It is also a Java-based utility that helps users load, clean, reconcile, and interpret data. The tool was also translated into more than 15 languages. Also, Data Profiling is made more accurate by adding web data to the mix. Users can also use General Refine Expression Language (GREL), Python, or Clojure to perform complex data transformations.<\/p>
Code-free profiling, cleaning, matching, and deduplication are all made possible with DataMatch Enterprise. For fixing problems with the quality of customer and contact data, it delivers a highly visual data cleansing solution. The system also employs a number of in-house and industry-standard algorithms to detect typographical, phonetic, fuzzy, mistyped, shortened, and domain-specific variants.<\/p>
While DataMatch Enterprise (DME) is available at no cost, more advanced versions, such as DataMatch Enterprise Server (DMES) have prices that are only made known upon reserving a demonstration.<\/p>
If you’re looking to create a data-driven, agile business, go no further than Ataccama, an enterprise Data Quality Fabric solution. Ataccama is one of the free and open-source data profiling tools available, with capabilities like advanced profiling metrics like foreign key analysis, the ability to profile data in the browser, the capacity to transform any data, etc.<\/p>
The software also makes use of AI to spot outliers during data loads, alerting users to potential problems. With tools like Ataccama DQ Analyzer and others built within the platform, data profiling is a breeze. The community is also planning to release other modules for Data Profiling, such as Data Prep and Freemium Data Catalog.<\/p>
Data profiling tools have several advantages, some of which are listed below:<\/p>