DQM

The Challenge: Ensuring ETL transforms don’t mask data quality problems

Your Data Quality Management (DQM) tools are providing ever increasing capabilities. The problem is they are not equipped to read your legacy data. Legacy systems have been in place for many years, and often do not enforce the level of data quality that we would insist on for a new system.

Ironically, this means that the systems most in need of data quality reviews are the least accessible!

Often, the critical data from these systems has been replicated in your data warehouse. You might assume that testing this copy of the data is sufficient, but unfortunately this data may not just be a copy. ETL transformations are often required to load the warehouse and these can very easily (and often do) obscure important data quality issues.

As a trivial example, a GENDER field may have been populated in the warehouse with logic like: if field=”M” then gender = M, else gender = F. If the legacy system allowed blanks or “?” to be entered, they would be lost in the warehouse, and would appear as female. You can imagine how a more complex transform could mask more serious errors.

Even this trivial example could lead to poor business decisions based on the gender of your customers!

What is needed is a way to apply your DQM tools directly to the legacy systems, and identify issues at the source. As well, such a solution could allow you to access other data not in the warehouse, either for reference or as additional DQM opportunities.

This is exactly what Arbutus Offers!

The Solution

Arbutus connects even your most complex mainframe legacy data to Windows. We offer a range of products, depending on your particular needs.

• Arbutus Connect is middleware that allows your existing Windows tools to directly access the mainframe data.
• Arbutus Integrate allows you to integrate legacy system testing into your standard processes.
• Arbutus Query is an end user Windows application that provides comprehensive query and reporting capabilities. This can be used to supplement your existing processes.
• Arbutus Migrate allows you to control systems conversion, to ensure data quality issues are found.

Call Arbutus today, and let us show you how easy it is.

See how Arbutus’ direct legacy file access assists in other application areas