DataFlux Data Management Studio 2.5: User Guide

Overview of Quality Knowledge Bases

A Quality Knowledge Base (QKB) is a collection of definitions and data types, organized into a hierarchy of locales, along with supporting library files such as vocabularies, grammars, and schemes. Several types of QKB are available from DataFlux. The most commonly-known are Contact Info (CI) QKBs. Product Data (PD) QKBs are shipped with DataFlux Solutions such as Materials Data Classification. QKBs of different types are not interchangeable with each other.

Data and logic in the QKB are organized into a set of definitions. Each definition defines a single context-sensitive data management operation. For example, a definition in the QKB might contain data and logic used to parse phone numbers. Another definition might contain data and logic used to determine the gender of an individual's name.

When you use a DataFlux product or SAS Data Quality Server to process your data, you specify which definitions the software should invoke. For example, if you are generating a report in entity resolution viewer, you can specify that the viewer should use the "Organization" definition when processing data in the "Company" field in your table.

A QKB from DataFlux contains a set of definitions developed at DataFlux for use with common types of data names, addresses, phone numbers, and so on. DataFlux provides periodic updates to the QKB with new definitions and enhancements to existing definitions. To download updates to a QKB, visit DataFlux QKBs or SAS QKBs.

You can use definitions in a QKB as delivered by DataFlux, or you can customize the QKB by modifying definitions or creating new definitions for use with your own business data. Customizations to a QKB are made using the Customize features in Data Management Studio. Since a QKB is used by all DataFlux products and the SAS Data Quality Server, QKB customizations are automatically available to your entire enterprise. For information about customized QKBs, see Customizing Quality Knowledge Bases. You can also refer to the QKB online Help.

Select Tools > Customize from the main menu to open the main Customize window. From that window, click Help > QKB Help Topics for information about how to proceed. You can also access a QKB in Customize by right-clicking a QKB in the Administration riser and selecting Edit Quality Knowledge Base in the pop-up menu. If the selected QKB has never been loaded by Customize, Customize will show the Open a QKB - Customize dialog with the selected QKB already highlighted. Then, you can select the locales to load and proceed as normal. Note that if the QKB has been previously opened in Customize, the most recently opened locales are directly loaded.