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Completeness of records

Characteristic Name: Completeness of records
Dimension: Completeness
Description: Every real world entity instance, that is relevant for the organization can be found in the data
Granularity: Record
Implementation Type: Process-based approach
Characteristic Type: Usage

Verification Metric:

The number of tasks failed or under performed due to missing records
The number of complaints received due to missing records

GuidelinesExamplesDefinitons

The implementation guidelines are guidelines to follow in regard to the characteristic. The scenarios are examples of the implementation

Guidelines: Scenario:
Implement a process level validation mechanism to avoid occurrence of missing records (1) A buyer must record/verify an expense or asset in accordance with accepting/receiving any purchased items. (2)New application are stored in a temporary cabinet after entering into the system and they will be transferred to the file cabinet at the end of every week after the property manager cross check them with the system
Execute database commits upon transaction sequences in application programs and make sure all the transactions in the sequence successfully commit and generate the required records at the end of the sequence. (1) In generating the MRP, the database operations will not be committed unless all materials in BOM is successfully executed for MRP
When distributed databases are used or online data collection devices are used, ensure the synchronisation/replication of records happen successfully without distortions and omissions. (1) EFTPOS transactions are replicated with bank database and create the new balance B/F in the account
Implement periodic audit process for critical tangible objects that are recorded as data in database (1) Annual audit for tangible assets in the organisation
Implement a validation mechanism in data transfers considering the business rules to monitor and ensure all records relevant to a event/transaction is transferred successfully. (1) Rules to verify the number of records in the source file and destination file (2) All records relevant to a customer trip is transferred to the central database from online data stores
Maintain error logs for system transactions and regularly monitor them and perform relevant forensic activities to find missing records. (1) A failed sales order creation

Validation Metric:

How mature is the process to prevent missing records

These are examples of how the characteristic might occur in a database.

Example: Source:
if Dept is a relation representing the employees of a given department, and one specific employee of the department is not represented as a tuple of Dept, then the tuple corresponding to the missing employee is in ref(Dept),and ref(Dept) differs from Dept in exactly that tuple. C. Batini and M, Scannapieco, “Data Quality: Concepts, Methodologies, and Techniques”, Springer, 2006.
if a column should contain at least one occurrence of all 50 states, but the column contains only 43 states, then the population is incomplete. Y. Lee, et al., “Journey to Data Quality”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006.
the database should contain all customers in North and South America, but it is known that the database reflects only a portion of the company’s customers. Coverage in this example is the percent- age of customers actually captured in the database compared to the population of all customers that should be in it. D. McGilvray, “Executing Data Quality Projects: Ten Steps to Quality Data and Trusted Information”, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008.

The Definitions are examples of the characteristic that appear in the sources provided.

Definition: Source:
A record exists for every Real-World Object or Event the Enterprise needs to know about. ENGLISH, L. P. 2009. Information quality applied: Best practices for improving business information, processes and systems, Wiley Publishing.
Completeness of data refers to the extent to which the data collected matches the data set that was developed to describe a specific entity. Monitoring for incomplete lists of eligible records or missing data items will identify data quality problems. HIQA 2011. International Review of Data Quality Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA), Ireland. http://www.hiqa.ie/press-release/2011-04-28-international-review-data-quality.
Quality of having all data that existed in the possession of the sender at time the data message was created. ISO 2012. ISO 8000-2 Data Quality-Part 2-Vocabulary. ISO.
Data is complete if no piece of information is missing – anti-example: "The Beatles were John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr" KIMBALL, R. & CASERTA, J. 2004. The data warehouse ETL toolkit: practical techniques for extracting. Cleaning, Conforming, and Delivering, Digitized Format, originally published.
Every real-world phenomenon is represented. PRICE, R. J. & SHANKS, G. Empirical refinement of a semiotic information quality framework. System Sciences, 2005. HICSS'05. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on, 2005. IEEE, 216a-216a.

 

Completeness of mandatory attributes

Characteristic Name: Completeness of mandatory attributes
Dimension: Completeness
Description: The attributes which are mandatory for a complete representation of a real world entity must contain values and cannot be null .
Granularity: Element
Implementation Type: Rule-based approach
Characteristic Type: Declarative

Verification Metric:

The number of null values reported in a mandatory attribute per thousand records

GuidelinesExamplesDefinitons

The implementation guidelines are guidelines to follow in regard to the characteristic. The scenarios are examples of the implementation

Guidelines: Scenario:
Specify which attributes are required to maintain a meaningful representation of an entity. 1) A sales order should at least have values for order number, Quantity, Price and Total (Sales order is the record)
Specify the states of an entity where the above identified attributes become mandatory values (1)Order number quantity and total should be available as mandatory by the time order is created whereas price will become mandatory when the order is approved. (States :"Order created" "Order approved") (2) Product is retired and now has a product-last-available-date
Specify the dependencies of entities in operational context to identify the mandatory values (1)Invoice number should exist to create a gate pass
Specify default values where possible (1) Default country is Australia for those who fill the application from Australian IP addresses

Validation Metric:

How mature is the creation and implementation of the DQ rules to handle mandatory values

These are examples of how the characteristic might occur in a database.

Example: Source:
1) Let us consider a Person relation with the attributes Name, Surname, BirthDate,and Email. The relation is shown in Figure 2.2. For the tuples with Id equalto2,3,and 4, the Email value is NULL. Let us suppose that the person represented by tuple 2 has no e-mail: no incompleteness case occurs. If the person represented by tuple 3 has an e-mail, but its value is not known then tuple 3 presents an incompleteness. Finally, if it is not known whether the person represented by tuple 4 has an e-mail or not, incompleteness may not be the case.

ID 1

2 3 4

Name John

Edward Anthony Marianne

Surname Smith

Monroe White Collins

BirthDate 03/17/1974 02/03/1967 01/01/1936 11/20/1955

Email

smith@abc.it NULL NULL NULL

not existing existing but unknown not known if existing

Fig. 2.2. The Person relation, with different null value meanings for the e-mail attribute

2) if Dept is a relation representing the employees of a given department, and one specific employee of the department is not represented as a tuple of Dept, then the tuple corresponding to the missing employee is in ref(Dept),and ref(Dept) differs from Dept in exactly that tuple.

C. Batini and M, Scannapieco, “Data Quality: Concepts, Methodologies, and Techniques”, Springer, 2006.
if a column should contain at least one occurrence of all 50 states, but the column contains only 43 states, then the population is incomplete. Y. Lee, et al., “Journey to Data Quality”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006.
1) A database contains information on repairs done to capital equipment. How- ever, it is a known fact that sometimes the repairs are done and the information about the repair is just not entered into the database. This is the result of lack of concern on the part of the repair people and a lack of enforcement on the part of their supervisors. It is estimated that the amount of missing information is about 5%. This database is probably a good-quality database for assessing the general health of capital equipment. Equipment that required a great deal of expense to maintain can be identified from the data. Unless the missing data is disproportionately skewed, the records are usable for all ordinary decisions. However, trying to use it as a base for evaluating information makes it a low-quality database. The missing transactions could easily tag an important piece of equipment as satisfying a warranty when in fact it does not.

2) a BIRTH_DATE value left blank would not be accurate because all of us have birth dates.

J. E. Olson, “Data Quality: The Accuracy Dimension”, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 9 January 2003.

The Definitions are examples of the characteristic that appear in the sources provided.

Definition: Source:
Domain Level: Data element is 1. Always required be populating and not defaulting; or 2. Required based on the condition of another data element. Entity Level: The required domains that comprise an entity exist and are not defaulted in aggregate. B. BYRNE, J. K., D. MCCARTY, G. SAUTER, H. SMITH, P WORCESTER 2008. The information perspective of SOA design Part 6:The value of applying the data quality analysis pattern in SOA. IBM corporation.
A given data element (fact) has a full value stored for all records that should have a value. ENGLISH, L. P. 2009. Information quality applied: Best practices for improving business information, processes and systems, Wiley Publishing.
Determined the extent to which data is not missing. For example, an order is not complete without a price and quantity. G. GATLING, C. B., R. CHAMPLIN, H. STEFANI, G. WEIGEL 2007. Enterprise Information Management with SAP, Boston, Galileo Press Inc.
Completeness refers to the expectation that certain attributes are expected to have assigned values in a data set. Completeness rules can be assigned to a data set in three levels of constraints: 1. Mandatory attributes that require a value 3. Inapplicable attributes (such as maiden name for a single male), which may not have a value.2. Optional attributes, which may have a value. LOSHIN, D. 2001. Enterprise knowledge management: The data quality approach, Morgan Kaufmann Pub.
An expectation of completeness indicates that certain attributes should be assigned values in a data set. Completeness rules can be assigned to a data set in three levels of constraints:1. Mandatory attributes that require a value, 2. Optional attributes, which may have a value based on some set of conditions, and 3. Inapplicable attributes, (such as maiden name for a single male), which may not have a value. LOSHIN, D. 2006. Monitoring Data quality Performance using Data Quality Metrics. Informatica Corporation.