Microsoft Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012

SQL Server Data Quality Services (DQS) is a knowledge-driven data quality product that is new to SQL Server 2012. The technology was from Microsoft’s acquisition of Zoomix in 2008. DQS enables you to build a knowledge base and use it to perform a variety of critical data quality tasks, including correction, enrichment, standardization, monitoring, and de-duplication of your data. DQS also enables you to perform data cleansing by using cloud-based reference data services provided by reference data providers. In addition, DQS provides you with profiling that is integrated into its data-quality tasks, enabling you to analyze the integrity of your data and provides suggestions for updating your data, along with the percent of confidence that the changes are correct.

DQS consists of Data Quality Server and Data Quality Client, both of which are installed as part of SQL Server 2012. Data Quality Server is a SQL Server instance feature that consists of three SQL Server catalogs with data-quality functionality and storage. Data Quality Client is a SQL Server shared feature that business users, information workers, and IT professionals can use to perform computer-assisted data quality analyses and manage their data quality interactively. You can also perform data quality processes by using the DQS Cleansing component in Integration Services (SSIS) and Master Data Services (MDS) data quality functionality, both of which are based on DQS.

The MDS Add-in for Excel uses DQS to compare two sources of data: the data from MDS and the data from another system or spreadsheet.