Posted on October 8, 2011 by Shannon Lowder
SQL Server Data Quality Services (DQS) is a new Knowledge-Driven Data Quality feature set of the upcoming Microsoft SQL Server “Denali” release aimed at the data stewards and IT professionals who seek to improve the quality of their business data. In this session, we describe the concept and main principles behind Data Quality Services from Microsoft, and demo the main capabilities of the product, such as knowledge management, cleansing, matching and profiling.
Imagine you will be able to download, install, and use DQS and after this session. Within minutes you will be able to make simple DQS knowledgebase design choices with minimal developer investment. You will be able to pull data from SQL Server table or Excel worksheets, such as incomplete and unsure customer addresses or product values or almost any custom entity that you want. DQS have specific activities to clean and de-duplicate that data to make suggestions and corrections. DQS presents the results in an interactive and simple-to-use GUI tool to approve, reject, or amend the changes before saving them to the destination of your choosing. Cleansing tasks can be automated with the SSIS DQS Data Cleansing component as well. Most any business user will quickly see the value of DQS and walk away feeling ready to show off their new found smarts to the rest of the team.
Jason Howell is a Senior Escalation Engineer working in the Microsoft Commercial Technical Support business unit, Developer Support Database group from the Charlotte, NC office. He has 10 years of experience in a variety of SQL Server technology areas such as SQL Server Database Engine, Performance, Replication, Integration Services, Analysis Services, Master Data Services, and most recently on Data Quality Services. Jason is a North Carolina native, has a degree in Computer Science from UNC Chapel Hill, and debugs C++ and .Net languages daily working on the most difficult troubleshooting scenarios from Microsoft customers around the globe.
Update: Not only did Jason give us a copy of his slide deck, he provided us pictures, and direct links to DQS Content! We’d like to thank Jason for this extra material.
Additional information:
The latest prerelease beta was made available publically today:
SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate 0 trial edition (180 days free trial from date of installation) released *today* for public download. DQS is good and stable in this build, so please try it. The .iso file available for download is a DVD image that can be mounted as a drive letter, or extracted using some compression tool like Winzip. A .cab is available if you click the HTML link in the download section as well.
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28145&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all
For this RC0 release, only public forum support is available, so use the forum for any questions. TAP customers (Early Adopters) can contact support via connect items as well.
Demos
These TechEd Video and demo files are similar to the ones I used if you want to play with that data.
Demo files: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dqs/archive/2011/09/05/dqs-blog-teched-demo.aspx
Video: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/DBI207
Useful DQS Links:
DQS Intro Videos (youtube style – please share with your team) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/hh323828.aspx
DQS Q&A Forum http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqldataqualityservices/
DQS team Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dqs/
SQL Connect (for filing bugs and Design requests directly) https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/Feedback
SQL Support (to contact Microsoft support team for opening service requests after RTM ships) http://support.microsoft.com
DQS Technet Wiki will list major known issues
- Install Issues: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3776.aspx
- Operational Issues: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3777.aspx
DQS MSDN Documentation http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff877925(v=sql.110).aspx (updated today 11/17 for SQL 2012 RC0 prerelease)
DQS Azure DataMarket providers https://datamarket.azure.com/browse/Data?Category=dqs