Data Integration Blog -

Business users possess the knowledge of how data is used for certain business processes — such business users are invaluable for examining business data: first, to determine its value in context, and second, to understand how it contributes to intelligence being gathered for the enterprise. Until data is understood in relationships to various systems and processes, it’s not possible to reliably use the right data for business intelligence or other integration projects.

Data profiling is the process of analyzing data to determine its structure and meaning. Various processes are performed to reveal patterns, metadata matches, value completeness, and so on. Data profiling started off as a technology and methodology for IT use. But data profiling is emerging as an important tool for business users to gain full value from data assets. When given the right tools and practices for data profiling, business users should quickly identify inconsistencies and problems for data, before it is used for reporting and intelligence purposes.

For effective analysis, a well-defined project and/or well-defined goals will keep the data profiling scope narrowed only to look at the most significant sources and data. A focused project with clear goals also evolves quickly into a business use case for the purposes of determining value of data profiling activities and for reusability. Business users need to address certain questions when building analysis plans:

• What are the right questions to ask?
• How to organize and reuse data profiling results and processes?
• What is the approach for dynamic data profiling?
• What are the test parameters?
• What metrics will be used to qualify data relevance and completeness?
• Which data is most relevant to business processes selected for intelligence projects?

With “data intelligence” in hand, business users now have greater understanding of many attributes of selected data to be able to ask the right questions for business intelligence projects. Business users will also know if they’re tapping into the data that they need to answer their questions.