Author Archives 
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A new years resolution to data profile
Well, it's the time of making and breaking resolutions, a time when setting realistic goals is sometimes hard to do with all the optimism of the new year. Sometimes, we make decisions NOT to set a goal, because we don't want to break it. You might be thinking you really should step up your data [...]
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Datamartist V1.5 Released
We are pleased to announce that Datamartist V1.5 is now available. This version of Datamartist brings with it some useful new functionality, including new functions that can be used in expressions, new capabilities in terms of exporting to databases, and a new data block. In this post, we'll look at two new features, the Pivot [...]
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Datamartist data quality cartoons
I've had lots of fun over the years building the little cartoons that have become a regular feature. Here are a few, reposted together just for fun. Data quality super powers. Fighting the anti-data forces of evil. Data silo fun. The joys of a moving target Data migration tools.
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Data Quality Rules
What's the difference between good data and bad data? It is much like the difference between good children and bad children- the bad data doesn't follow the rules. But what are the rules? Unlike the rules for kids, which have been fixed in stone for decades (or at least, parents wish it were so), the [...]
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Data Profiler tool Datamartist V1.4 Released
We are pleased to announce the release of Datamartist V1.4 We've had lots of great feedback from our customers and are thrilled with how people are using Datamartist, not just for powerful and flexible data profiling, but for data migration, data quality work and ad-hoc datamart creation. As always we're committed to continually improve our [...]
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Data quality sizzle
I'm an engineer. Being an engineer, I'm pretty product focused, pretty technology focused, and pretty "does it work or not" focused. Having technical things like tools work is useful, and good. But just because you build it, does not mean they will come. The challenge often in Data Quality is that often what has to [...]
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Which myths are holding you back?
In your business you have "facts". Things that are considered to be true. Lots of folks have heard of them, or believe them, and propagate them. But are they true? You are making decisions every day based on these "facts". Obviously, we have to believe something. But today I'm asking you to be skeptical. Question [...]
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Data profiling- a search or a code to crack?
Often, tracking down data quality issues is presented as a search for bad data- but sometimes the data isn't so much bad, as not understood. In legacy systems, you might be more trying to first find the meaning of data- in effect, decoding it as if it had been encrypted (which in a way, time [...]
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Good Data is a force for good.
The United Nations has declared that today is the first world statistics day, "celebrating the many contributions and achievements of official statistics". It's the kind of holiday that those of us in the data wrangling profession can really get behind. Data about people in general, and their well being, their needs and challenges is a [...]
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Data quality challenges: behavioral inertia and its evil opposite
Often, I hear someone say something like "this would be much easier if users would just..." or "If only we could convince the sales people that...". Technology folks often are frustrated by the people component of the complex systems they are trying to install. People are not a problem solved by technology Some try to [...]
