Meta Data Plus

The Meta Data Plus process takes the standard Gladstone Data Integrity process and expands into other areas.  The premise of the product is that we will learn as much about the data as possible using automated programs.

The steps are as follows.

The first thing to do is to assign different categories to each element from just the file definition.  The first two categories are TEXT and NUMB.  Then we further define elements.  If an element is 3 positions or less, both alpha and numeric, they are considered potential relational elements.  If an element is five positions or longer with a sign and has two decimal points, that element is considered a dollar element.  At this time that is all that we can determine from only looking at the file definition.

We then make a special run of the Data Integrity for 1000 records.  We then programmatically analyze the data and make additional assumptions.  From the data integrity run we can identify a field as a potential unique/key element if there have not been any duplicate elements within the first 1000 records.  We can also identify an element as being a date and the format of the date.

Now we allow the user to make certain decisions if desired.  We have taken the information from these procedures and put them into a file that will be taken into a PC program.  They user can ask to see what elements have been identified as unique/key.  They can indicate that they are not keys and turn their key indicators off.  The same thing is done for date elements and for relational elements.  Not only can the user turn off indicators, but they can also turn on any indicators.

After a user has had the option of making decisions, the next step is to perform a full file Data Integrity.

Once this has been done other programs can now be executed to provide additional information.  All the information is then accumulated and put into one file, which is then moved to the PC for reviewing.