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Home > Data Cleansing Tools
Data Cleansing Tools
By : Ben
Data cleansing usually refers to removal of junk data from useful information. Specially designed data cleansing tools are used for these purposes. Data cleaning is also called as data scrubbing and is usually done to databases and datasets. However, it is important to note that data cleaning is not only about deleting the wrong data but also correcting the inaccurate data and bring about overall consistency in the data. Data cleansing tools are able to find, correct if required, and delete erroneous data, also referred to dirty data at times. Dirty data could be anything like contradictory, variable, inappropriate, deficient, imperfect, redundant, and/or out-of-date data which may serve no purpose at all. Though the tasks may look similar, data validation is different than data cleaning.
There could be several reasons why incorrect data gets fed into the system and the need for data cleansing tools arises. Some of the reasons could be errors while typing in the data, mismatched erratic areas of operation, distinctive definitions of similar entries, data gets damaged while it is being transferred or saved, and so on. Among all the IT and software operations, dealing with inadequacy in quality of data is considered to be among the most critical problems. The primary reason for this is that a lot of unnecessary junk data could eat up significant amount of storage space, slower the processing speeds, and consume time.
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Data cleaning can be as simple as manually going through the data, identifying the inaccuracy, and correcting or deleting it accordingly. For complex processes, automated and computerized data cleansing tools are used. Such tools have predefined rules and procedures against which the data to be cleaned is verified. These data cleansing tools can be programmed such that they automatically delete particular records based on some criterion, rectify wrong spellings of words, delete duplicate entries, and so on. Other advancements in data cleansing tools also include utilities like entering the correct name of the city based on the zip code, or automatically select a currency and apply it to all the records in the set, and so on.
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Data cleansing tools help business operations in great deal, as updated database will enable the staff to fetch accurate data and work further. For e.g. if the phone numbers are incorrect in terms of format or blank records, customers may not be contactable. Also inaccurate email addresses will make it difficult for automated email systems to send reminders or latest updates to desired recipients. Thus the objective of data cleansing tools is to ensure that accurate data is available in the database systems at all times and that it is usable for business processes. |