Data analysis - Activity
Data profiling
Examining a dataset to understand its contents, patterns and quality problems
What's it for?
Helps people understand what is in a dataset and spot unexpected patterns or quality problems.
For example…
Before migration, data profiling shows that 18% of customer records have no postcode and one date field contains several different formats
Before importing a supplier file, an analyst checks which columns are often blank, which values appear repeatedly and whether anything looks unusually formatted