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Data Management & Warehousing

Data Quality:
Common Problems & Checks
Date: 24 April 2009
Location: Zagreb, Croatia

David M. Walker
davidw@datamgmt.com
+44 (0) 7050 028 911 - http://www.datamgmt.com
Agenda
•  Introduction
•  Common Problems
•  Automated Checking
•  Profiling Checks
•  Conclusions

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Introduction
•  Data Quality problems are a SOURCE SYSTEM
issue and an ETL issue
–  They just manifest themselves in the data warehouse
•  Prevention is better than cure
–  Fixing the source system or the ETL is ALWAYS
cheaper and more effective than cleaning the data in
the ETL or in the Data Warehouse itself
•  Data Quality is a continuous process
–  It is never finished and always needs to be monitored

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The Impact of Poor Data Quality

•  Devalues the data warehouse


–  Discourages people from trusting or using the
system and therefore curtailing the life of the
data warehouse
•  Highlights failings in the source system
and/or the business process
–  Businesses would rather fix at any cost in the
data warehouse and pretend that there isn’t a
source system problem
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Common Problems
•  11 types of problem that account for the
most common problems
•  They usually reflect poor design and/or
implementation of systems
•  Most can be fixed or monitored and
managed to limit the impact

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Referential Issues
•  Keys that are not unique
–  Systems that do not enforce the unique
primary key or flat files or spreadsheets
–  Also generated by ETL that creates a
surrogate key incorrectly
•  Referential Integrity Failures
–  Where referentially integrity is not enforced
values in the child table are created that are
not in the parent table
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Data Type Issues
•  Format Errors
–  Typically in Date/Time type fields
–  02/04/2009 2nd April (UK) or 4th Feb (US)
•  Inappropriate Data Types
–  Storing Dates in Character Strings
20090624 as YYYYMMDD format string
–  But what about 20090230?

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Data Model Issues
•  De-normalised tables
–  Commonly created for performance reasons
–  Inherently duplicates data
–  Often gets out of sync
•  Data/Column Retirement
–  Upgrade to system retires a column
–  ETL continues to use the old column
•  Poor Table/Column Naming
–  Don’t assume that a column does what it says
–  Don’t assume that a column is still being used for it’s original
purpose

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Data Content Issues
•  Null Values
–  Systems that have many optional fields will
often have missing values
–  Null values allow rows to be silently omitted
from queries
•  Inappropriate Values
–  Databases allow special characters and/or
leading/trailing white space
–  “DataspaceQuality” != “DatatabQuality”
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Data Feed Issues
•  Missing Data
–  Where a stream of files are loaded by ETL if
one is dropped it can go un-noticed
–  Common with CDR type loads in Telcos
•  Late Data
–  A short term data quality issue
–  Leaves users believing there is a problem
–  Produces inconsistent reporting over time

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Automated Checking
•  Regularly run checks
•  Broad Coverage across systems
–  100s and 1000s not 10s of queries
–  Run in a low priority loop in the background
•  Used against:
–  Sources
–  Data Staging
–  Data Warehouse
•  No Product Required
–  We often implement this as a controlling shell script and lots of
small scripts, one for each check

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Trending
•  Absolute Trending
–  Track an expected value over time
•  e.g. Returned Mail is usually less than 500 items per day
•  If the value is <500 status is green, 501 to 1000 amber and >1000
red
•  Statistical Process Control (SPC) Trending
–  Track an expected value where the value changes over time
•  e.g. Telco CDRs – expect more as the company grows
•  Don’t want to be continuously changing the threshold
•  Compare current load to historical means
•  If current load within 2 Standard Deviations – Green,
3 Standard Deviations – Amber,
4 or more Standard Deviations - Red

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Flow Control
•  Flow Control
–  ETL manipulates data
•  Joins, De-duplicates, Filters, Aggregates, etc
–  Use the formula:
Source Count - Filtered Count – DeDup Count – Target Count = 0

•  Trusted Source
–  Compare the result with a third system
–  e.g. Does the Count of Switch CDRs =
Count of those processed by the billing system
Count of those processed in the DWH

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Business Rules Based
•  Specific rules to match known business
rules
–  Account holders > 18 (Sys Date – DoB)
–  Account holders < 115
–  Credit Card numbers are 16 digits long
–  Number of accounts without a status
•  Result should yield Zero

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Automated Checking - Ops
•  Managed by exception
–  Red given priority
–  Amber are always followed up
•  Massive number of checks
–  100’s are good
–  1000’s are better
•  Presentation
–  Alerts, RAG, Graphical, Numerical, etc.
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Data Profiling Checks
•  Run manually because they need to be
interpreted by a human
•  Leads to new business rules being added
to the automated checks
•  Can be done with simple reporting tools or
commercial data profiling tools

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Frequency Outliers
•  Count discreet values in a table and check
items with many more or less than normal
–  e.g. DoB 01-01-01 many times more common
than any other value indicates source default
and something that needs work
–  e.g. Count of SMS messages significantly
lower on a given day may equate to a genuine
system failure and therefore not a DQ
problem
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Maximum & Minimum
•  Determine what a valid range for any
value should be
–  e.g. age between 18 and 115
–  Immediately finds individual data quality
issues that can be resolved
–  Allows an analyst to create new business
rules to prevent future problems

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Sequential Keys
•  If a system has a sequential key:

Max Value – Min Value – Count = 0

•  If this is true – is it too perfect for an


operational system and therefore test data
•  If this is false – what has caused the gaps,
are the deletions intentional?
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Data Types
•  Validation of mis-used data types before
loading
–  e.g. Dates in Character fields
–  Format: YYYYMMDD
–  Check MM between 01 and 12
–  Check DD between 01 and 31
–  Check MMDD does not include 0230, 0231
–  etc.

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Skewed Pattern Profiling
•  Looking for specific patterns in data
–  e.g. UK National Insurance Numbers (?) have
the format AA 99 99 99 A
–  Pattern match all values looking for
exceptions
•  Number Lengths are a special case
–  e.g Credit Card Numbers are 16 digits long

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Content Checking
•  Content Checking is the manual review of
character strings
•  Needs a good understanding of the nature
of the data
•  Often determines the need to do analysis
of other types

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Nulls & White Space
•  Nulls
–  Fields that have large proportion of nulls are usually
not useful
–  Also common is default status of null
(e.g. Account us either closed or null)
•  White Space
–  Not Null fields with a single space
–  Tab instead of space
–  Leading/Trailing white space
–  Double White Space: “DavidSpaceSpaceWalker”
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Punctuation & Control Chars
•  Punctuation
–  CSV files that are not properly quoted perform
field shifts
–  Address lines with extra commas
•  Control Characters
–  Data fields that contain ASCII character codes
0 to 31 and 127 to 159 are often ‘invisible’
when viewed in queries but cause failures
–  Also be aware of ‘code-page’ specifics
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Problem Management Matrix

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Continuous DQ Process

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Quality is FREE …
… as long as you are prepared to
INVEST HEAVILY in it

Philip Crosby 1980

Especially true of
Data Quality

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Data Management & Warehousing

Data Quality:
Common Problems & Checks

Thank You
David M. Walker
davidw@datamgmt.com
+44 (0) 7050 028 911 - http://www.datamgmt.com

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