Data Quality and Integrity Flashcards

Which data quality dimension measures the degree to which data values fall within acceptable ranges and adhere to defined business rules?

Answer: Validity

Validity measures whether data conforms to defined formats, ranges, and business rules, ensuring values are acceptable within the data model.

A data model enforces referential integrity by ensuring that every foreign key value in a child table corresponds to an existing primary key in the parent table. What happens when this rule is violated?

Answer: An orphan record is created

A referential integrity violation results in an orphan record — a child record that references a non-existent parent, breaking relationships in the data model.

In the context of data quality, which term describes data that exists in multiple places but has conflicting values?

Answer: Inconsistent data

Inconsistent data refers to the same data element having different values across systems or tables, which violates the consistency dimension of data quality.

Which constraint type in a relational data model ensures that a column or set of columns cannot contain NULL values?

Answer: NOT NULL constraint

A NOT NULL constraint enforces the completeness dimension of data quality by requiring that a column always has a value.

A data steward discovers that customer records have phone numbers stored as both '555-1234' and '5551234'. Which data quality dimension is primarily affected?

Answer: Conformity

Conformity measures whether data follows specified formats and standards; inconsistent phone number formats indicate a conformity failure.

What is the primary purpose of a data quality scorecard in enterprise data modeling?

Answer: To measure and communicate data quality metrics against defined thresholds

A data quality scorecard provides a structured view of quality metrics versus targets, enabling stakeholders to track and improve data health over time.

Which technique is commonly used in data modeling to detect and merge duplicate entity records that represent the same real-world object?

Answer: Master data management (MDM)

Master Data Management (MDM) provides processes and tools to identify, merge, and maintain a single authoritative record for duplicate entities across systems.