Creating Data Quality Rule In SAP Information Steward

This Blog Post will give the overview on creating data quality rule in SAP Information Steward data quality tool. I will start with overview in this post and will explain the steps to create a rule in SAP IS.

So let’s start by understanding what is Data Quality Rule?

What is Data Quality Rule?

Data is always been the core data asset for any company or enterprise. The bad data always leads to inconsistent business processes. To mitigate the bad data and make sure your data quality is fit for use,  you need to create data validation to measure the quality of data.

SAP IS data quality tool helps in defining and building these rules, below are the steps to create a rule in SAP IS

To create a rule in SAP IS we use rules section in Data insight module of information steward.

Once you are in the rules section you would see different operations available at the top like creation, copy etc, I will explain them in detail. Refer below image, we will go from left to right starting with ‘+’ option

Rules Menu

1. Creating New Rules – This option is used to create a new rule
2. Add Public Rules– This option is used to add existing public rules available in information steward rules repository
3. View/Edit– Option to display or edit rule depending on the user roles
4. Review Rule– option to review the rules and then approve or reject based on review
5. Publish – Option to publish the rule for other IS projects
6. Copy – Option to copy rule
7. Binding –  Option used to bind the data set on which the rule would be executed
8. Delete– Option to delete the selected rule (Note : Bindings should be deleted before you try to delete the rule)
9. Rule History – Option to see the rule changes
10. Show usage-Option will help in checking where all the rule is being used currently
11. Share– This will generate a URL for that rule which can be shared with other users
12. Refresh – This Option will refresh the rules section

Steps for Creating Rule :

1. Click on create new rule option, Rule editor window will get open
2. Fill the mandatory and other important details
   • Name – Here you can add meaningful name to the DQ rule
   • Description – Specify the description for the rule, preferably it is good to add rule validation requirement in this
   • Approver – Select  the approver from the list who will review the rule
   • Observer- If you want some other user to keep eye on the rule, you can add that in the observer field
   • Quality Dimension – Specify the dimension for data quality rule. This is basically a rule category based on type of validation you are adding to rule. eg- If you are confirming some length or format of a field you can specify the dimension as Conformity
   • 
3. Parameters – This section is used to add parameters for the rule which would be used for binding fields on which rule will be executed
4. Expression Definition – This section would be used to write the actual validation/logic as per the requirement. you can use the inbuilt functions provided to help you write the code/logic
5. Expression filters – Here you can specify the filters for your data set if they are specific to rule.
6. Test – Test option allows you to test your logic by giving some dummy inputs to check if your rule is giving you correct results or not

Once you have completed all the details, logic and testing you can save the rule or you can also send it for review.

Rule Editor

Binding the Rule:

Above steps are just to create a rule in IS but to get the rule work, we need to bind it to our dataset and fields for which validation needs to be performed

To bind the rule,

• Select the binding option from rules menu after selecting the rule for which you want to add binding
• select the table/view on which you want to run your rule to check the validation
• bind the fields corresponding to parameters
• Specify the threshold value for rule results and then save

Execution of Rule:

• To execute the rule we need to create task for the same.
• For creating task, go to workspace section and then Rule results tab in top right corner.
• Select the table/view which you used during binding
• You will find calculate score option the top menu, click on that.
• It will open a window, where you can set the execution properties and give a name to task.
• Click on save and run now button, this will trigger the rule task and status can be monitored in tasks section
• Once task is completed, come back to rules section and if you select the rule you should be able to see the score out of 10, failed records and total records adjacent to your dataset (table/view)

Rule Score

I have added few screenshots for your reference, it may help in understanding the details provided here.

Here I complete the detailed explanation of creating the rule in SAP Information Steward.

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