About SAS Data Remediation :: SAS® Data Remediation 2.3: User's Guide

Overview

For many data-intensive IT projects, anomalies or inconsistencies in the data prevent systems involved from operating optimally and providing clean and timely data to each other and end users. Data remediation provides a means to identify, review, and correct the problem data before it reaches the downstream systems.

SAS Data Remediation makes it easy to capture and review problems found in enterprise data. SAS Data Remediation has a web-based interface for data administrators and a representational state transfer (REST) web service API for system integration. Both of these interfaces interact with a remediation database that contains information about where the problem data is located, which system generated the data, who should see the data, and how the data might be corrected.

Note: Only authenticated users can successfully access remediation functionality.

Configuration

Configuration of your SAS Data Remediation environment is handled by the standard SAS deployment process. If you are upgrading from a previous version of SAS Data Remediation, your remediation database is automatically updated when the SAS Data Remediation application is started on the server for the first time after installation of the newer version. All issues and their state remain current in the application.

How Issues Are Organized

Overview

IT systems or data-centric applications can interact with SAS Data Remediation through a REST web service API. This API enables the originating system, which contains data flagged by data quality business rules, to send information about the state and location of the data errors to SAS Data Remediation. SAS Data Remediation organizes the data and gives specific sets of users access to remediation issues, items, and packages. Issues, items, and packages are associated with an application and subject area in remediation. If a package is created for an application or subject area not already known to the data remediation service, then it is registered automatically with the service.

Issues

Issues are descriptions of the problems in the data and include information such as due dates, importance indicators, owners, and statuses. Issues can link to data elements that can be transmitted to remediation plug-ins. The plug-ins provide a way to correct the data flagged as having an issue, because source system data is not brought into SAS Data Remediation. Only a reference to the data is brought into SAS Data Remediation.

The following are properties of issues:

Issues are linked to Issue Types that can have Tasks (workflow templates) associated with them. Tasks define a correction process. If an issue is associated with a workflow, it can be started by the data remediation service when the package is created. Issue details are automatically propagated into the workflow only at this time.
When creating an issue, Assignee defaults to Unassigned if no assignee is designated.
If an issue has a status of Open with no assignee, any authorized user can modify its writable fields: Importance, Status, Assignee, Due Date, and Note.
If an issue has a status of In Workflow, any participant in the workflow can modify its writable fields: Importance and Note.
If an issue has a status of Open with no assignee and you change the status to In Progress, you become the assignee.
If an issue has a status of In Progress, only the assignee can modify its properties. The assignee can reassign the issue to another user, which resets the issue to a default status of Open. Because the status is Open, anyone can modify the issue.
If an issue has a status of Closed or Rejected, its properties cannot be modified.

Items

Items are rows of data in a system. For example, a customer record is an item. SAS Data Remediation keeps tracks of the issues associated with an item. In SAS Data Remediation, items are the elements against which business rules have been run to look for erroneous data. Items do not capture the complete external record, but generally point to the record through a key value. One or more issues can be associated with an item.

Packages

Packages are collections of items with issues. A single package is generated by a single business process so that all issues that come from the same process can be viewed collectively. One or more items can be associated with a package. After a package is created, you cannot add items or issues to it.

Note: Only packages can be deleted. Items or issues cannot be deleted.

SAS Management Console

SAS Data Remediation uses the SAS Management Console to define and configure various aspects of the processing environment. Users and roles are set within SAS Management Console. For more information, see SAS Management Console: Guide to Users and Permissions .

Erroneous data or non-compliant processes can be sent to SAS Data Remediation in several ways. These methods include, but are not limited to, the following programs:

SAS MDM

Applications send problem records to SAS Data Remediation for review and correction via the REST API. When issues that need attention enter SAS Data Remediation, the issues appear in a list in the SAS Data Remediation interface.

SAS Data Integration Studio

Users can write data integration processes that can use the REST API to send problem records to SAS Data Remediation for review and correction.