Designing data quality SLAs
When you design a data quality SLA, you must decide which data assets or columns to monitor and what quality criteria are to be applied. Also, define whether a remediation workflow is triggered if a violation of the data quality SLA is detected.
Required permissions
You must have these user permissions:
- To only view data quality SLAs, you must have the Access governance artifacts permission.
- To create, edit, or delete data quality SLAs, you must have the Access governance artifacts and Manage data quality SLAs permissions.
Properties of data quality SLAs
The properties and behavior of data quality SLAs differ significantly from other governance artifacts.
| Property or behavior | Supports? | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Must have unique names? | Yes | Each data quality SLA must have a unique name. |
| Description? | Yes | Describe what the rule does in natural language so that it is easy to understand. Include standard words and terms to make it easy to search for this rule. |
| Add relationships to other rules? | No | Data quality SLAs don't have relationships with each other. |
| Add relationships to other governance artifacts? | No | You can use business terms in the definitions of data quality SLAs but no relationship is created. |
| Add relationship to asset? | No | Data quality SLAs don't have relationships to any assets. |
| Add custom properties? | No | Data quality SLAs don't support custom properties. |
| Add custom relationships? | No | Data quality SLAs don't support custom relationships. |
| Organize in categories? | No | Data quality SLAs are not controlled by categories. They are activated per project and are visible to all users. |
| Import from a file? | No | You must create each data quality SLA individually. |
| Export to a file? | No | You can't export a data quality SLA. |
| Managed by workflows? | No | Data quality SLAs are published and active after creation. |
| Specify start and end dates? | No | Data quality SLAs are active after creation and until they are deleted. |
| Assign a Steward? | No | Data quality SLAs don't have stewards. |
| Add tags? | No | Data quality SLAs don't support tags. |
| Assign to an asset? | Yes | Although you can't manually assign data quality SLAs to assets, rules are applied to assets that match the criteria of the rule. |
| Assign to a column in a data asset? | Yes | Although you can't manually assign a data quality SLA to a column in an asset, data quality SLAs are applied to columns that match the criteria of the rule. |
| Automated assignment during profiling or enrichment? | No | Data quality SLAs are activated per project and are applied whenever a data quality check is run on an asset that matches the criteria in the rule conditions. |
| Predefined artifacts in the [uncategorized] category? | No | You must create all data quality SLAs. |
SLA conditions
Determine the level at which you want to monitor the data quality:
- For entire data assets
- For columns in selected data assets
- For data assets and columns in these data assets
- For specific columns regardless of the containing data asset
Determine the items, the critical data elements (CDEs), that you want to monitor. The main condition is specified at the data-asset level. If your CDEs are columns, you must configure subconditions.
Select critical data elements by name or by the assigned business terms:
-
If you target specific data assets or columns, select them by name. You must use the exact asset or column name. You can set up the rule to cover multiple data assets or columns by providing a list of names separated by comma.
-
If you target data assets or columns with a specific context, select them by assigned business terms. You can provide a list of business terms separated by comma. All data assets or columns that have one of the specified business terms assigned are subject to the SLA.
Specify the quality criteria that must be met. Select a type of data quality score and the threshold that must be reached or passed for a data asset or column to be compliant with the SLA. Depending on the level of monitoring, specify quality criteria for the data assets, for columns, or for both.
You can choose from these types of scores:
- Overall data quality score
- Dimension score of a predefined data quality dimension
- Dimension score of a custom data quality dimension. You can create custom dimensions by using the IBM Knowledge Catalog API Create a data quality dimension.