Data Quality and its Importance
Schwartz, the author of the article Data Quality Raising Its Profile, discusses the importance of data quality and its management. He describes about the growing consciousness for data quality and mentions actions taken by some data management corporations to achieve data quality. To mention a few Data Flux and Trillium Software are organizations that are implementing data monitoring to achieve quality in data. It is understood that outlining data during the initial stages of a project is common, but data monitoring is a tool that helps one to observe data behavior during its retrieval and access.
It is unarguable that accurate and reliable data is crucial in making well-versed business decisions. The data existing in data marts and warehouses are monitored over a period of time. A tolerance level or range is determined for the being monitored. Whenever the data reaches or crosses this tolerance level, the data management organizations rectify the abnormality. This data monitoring is also used to clean data monitor changes and send alerts.
Corporate sections are incorporating external data and unstructured data into data management to test its feasibility and accuracy.
References:
Schwartz, E. (2004, July 26). Data Quality Raising Its Profile. InfoWorld, 26(30), 15-15. Retrieved September 13, 2009, from Academic Search Elite database.
Max,
Glad you have brought data monitoring up. In science and other aspects of life, if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. It’s surely no different for data!
However, what does a Kilo or Metre of your finest data look like?
What are the tests for trusted data? Whilst there are obvious ones like:
Completeness, Conformity, Duplications, Precision etc. These are rather static and don’t always satisfy the needs of the business as complex relationships and business rules need to be tested.
At DQ Global we’re introducing a Regulate module which downstream of the Investigate, Manipulate, Validate and Associate stages of our DQ 360 process to ensure data conforms to complex business rules which test for fitness for purpose in the context of client needs.
Eventually all businesses will know the equivalents of what their data weighs, what it’s density and Calorific value is. And perhaps best of all what it’s actually worth financially as a business asset!