New Free Tool: SQL Data Profiler

by Oct 12, 2017

IDERA released a new free tool, SQL Data Profiler, designed to provide quick visibility into data patterns contained in SQL Server databases. Its intuitive user interface simplifies exploring patterns in data by streamlining and automating the process. Quickly view a summary of the data in selected database tables and columns, and receive recommendations based on the data in the columns.

With the free tool, profile data in tables (optionally by subsets of data types), adjust profiling thresholds to customize the analysis, display a summary of data in a selected table and its columns, receive recommendations based on data per column, and export results to plain text file format.

Connect to an instance of SQL Server, select a database, and select a table to profile the data contained in the table and its columns. Select the types of data to include in the profiling of the database table. Focus on these data types to reduce the time to analyze large data sets and the number of displayed results. For example, initially only profile core elements and subsequently investigate specific areas of interest.

Modify the settings of the profiling operation. Set the thresholds for suggesting reference tables, possible anomalies, and different data types.

Display a summary of the data contained in a selected table and each of its columns. For the table, display the number of columns and rows, the last modification date of the data and schema, and the size of the table. For each column, show the name, data type, statistics, and more for a total of 19 properties. Profile the distribution of the values in each column. For a selected column, display the list of unique values, their count, and their relative occurrence.

Display recommendations based on the data contained in a selected column. These recommendations refer to modifying the data type to accommodate the data better, handling sparse columns, migrating columns to reference or lookup tables, adding foreign key constraints, and more for a total of 37 recommendations.

Save the chosen settings and options, and the results of the profiling to a tab-delimited plain text file. Import this file into applications such as Microsoft Excel with minimal user interaction.

Download the new SQL Data Profiler today to analyze data patterns in tables and columns. Refer also to IDERA’s Community Forum for SQL Data Profiler.