Creating a Quick Profile

In this section:

How to:

A profile computes statistics and other data analysis measures for a data file.


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Procedure: How to Create a Quick Profile

To create a quick profile, you will first be given the option to create a Profile from a file or from a database table.

In order to profile a database table, you must have a database configured.

  1. To start the process of creating a profile, click New, and then select Profile, as shown in the following image.

  2. Select a file you would like to profile and click Next, as shown in the following image.

    Note: You can skip these steps by right-clicking on a text file or database table and selecting Create Profile. This will take you directly to the next step.


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Editing Metadata

You may need to assign metadata to your file to describe how it is formatted. If there is no metadata associated with the file, the Edit Metadata window appears, as shown in the following image.

Click the Advanced button to customize the format and appearance of your data, especially if the format shown is not correct.

The following dialog appears:

In Section 1 of the initial Format tab, the rules for reading and interpreting the raw data can be specified, as shown in the following list:

Section 2 of the Edit File Metadata dialog allows to see the columns resulting from specifications in Section 1, change their type, and specify their format where applicable. For example, if you choose integer or long data format, you will be able to choose the thousands separator in the Format column.

Section 3 allows you to see the final data in the Result data tab and compare it to the the original data in the Decoded original data tab.


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Configuring Your Profile

Once the appropriate metadata has been assigned, the profile configuration step appears, as shown in the following image.

This panel allows you to configure the profile that you will create. You can specify where to create the profile as well as which columns to profile. Drill-through functionality allows you to see the individual records that comprise of the statistics that are generated (database connection required). There is also the option to create a Profile or a Plan file.

If you select the Profile option and click Finish, the Profile will be generated immediately using the specified settings and opened in the Profile Viewer.

If you select the Plan file option, a Plan will be created. It can be run to generate a Profile. This option is useful if you wish to modify or filter the data before profiling it, or if you want to do some advanced configuration of the profiling algorithm (such as adding business rules or performing primary key analysis).


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