Does DQS Project Update DQS KnowledgeBase?

Question

I've got a question about the interaction between a DQS project and a DQS KnowledgeBase.  Imagine the following scenario:

I've created a knowledge base that consists of Names and Addresses and business rules that govern some business logic specific to the company and how we would want to validate them.  I have run knowledge discovery on my source data and have come up with a matching policy and am ready to start the DQS project creation. 

Now hypothetically lets say I have data coming from two different data sources, used by two different departments in the company but happen to have the same set of domains and business rules for Name and Address.  For instance, Insurance Agents that sell Life Insurance and Registered Reps that sell securities.  The data stewards for these two entities are two separate people on two separate floors in the building who have never met.  Most people in this example are either an Insurance Agent or a Registered Rep but there are a handful that are both that I would like to match with the matching policy.

For simplicity and security reasons I would like to create two separate DQS projects that sit on top of the same knowledge base.  As new Insurance Agents come in and my knowledge base begins to grow, is that knowledge base only growing within my Insurance Agents project or can my Registered Reps project also see those changes within the underlying knowledge base that supports both projects?  Looking at the DQS_Main and DQS_Projects backend it would appear that the knowledge base growth is project specific.  Is that correct, and if so, is there an easy way to push it back down to the underlying shared knowledge base?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hello,

The simple answer to your question is that merely running data quality project on a knowledge base does not update the DQS knowledge base. The DQS knowledge base can be updated only by performing the following 3 activities:

1. Domain Management
2. Knowledge Discovery
3. Matching Policy

For more information, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg524799(v=sql.110).aspx.

However, DQS does provide an ability to import knowledge from a completed cleansing project to a knowledge base to enhance the knowledge. For more information, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh479581(v=sql.110).aspx.

Thanks,
Vivek
SQL Server User Education 

Answer 2

Thanks for the reply.  I know this is the first iteration of DQS and am just curious as to whether there is a technical reason as to why DQS was architected this way so that a project doesnt improve the underlying KB or if this is just one of those things that will eventually be changed in further releases.  

Seems to me that there would be a lot of reasons to want to abstract knowledge bases to be as broad as can be so that multiple data stewards could leverage and grow the same KB and it doesn't exactly make sense to have to build a process in which the dqs project has to be reimported into the KB after each cleanup.

For my needs I am planning on building several projects off the same knowledge base for the cleansing and then doing the complex business rules for the cleaned entities in MDS, not DQS but having to reimport the knowledge from the DQS project each time kind of throws a wrench into this plan.  Is there any way to automate this process or does it have to be done through the UI?

Answer 3

No automatic Project-to-KB improvement in this release.

Just my opinion - its like v1 for DQS, and I think product team has many ambitions like this, and many competiting priorities to juggle, so we will see in time. Its good feedback to hear.

I hear the requests for a DQS API is high in demand, and if that one day ships (not saying it ever will), then maybe it will be easy to extend and automate this idea from a custom app or script.

Thanks, Jason

---

Didn't get enough help here? Submit a case with the Microsoft Customer Support team for deeper investigation - http://support.microsoft.com/select/default.aspx?target=assistance