SAS Quality Knowledge Base (QKB) Customization Tools – Available for All SAS QKB Customers
The SAS® Quality Knowledge Base (commonly referred to as the QKB) is a set of files containing proprietary rules, expressions, and reference data that are combined to analyze and transform text data in various SAS products such as SAS Data Integration Studio, DataFlux Data Management Studio, SAS Event Stream Processing, and SAS Data Preparation on SAS Viya. The QKB has out-of-the-box definitions for data types such as Name, Organization, Address, and Phone. The definitions are part of a locale which is a Language/Country combination – for example, English (United States), English (Australia), or Spanish (Spain). There are definitions for parsing, standardization, matching, etc. to help improve the quality of your data.
Many people are unaware that they can customize the existing QKB definitions as well as create their own definitions to perform custom data quality logic for other types of data such as healthcare, retail, financial etc. Once the customizations have been made and thoroughly tested, then those customized definitions can be used in any of the SAS products that reference the QKB for data quality operations.
Customizing the QKB in the past required having Data Management Studio installed and a license for Customize. Now, you can download the SAS QKB Customization Tools to customize the QKB to suit your needs if you do not have access to Data Management Studio. This means all SAS customers who use the Quality Knowledge Base can take advantage of customizing the QKB!
The SAS QKB Customization Tools installation is downloaded from the SAS Support Downloads site at: https://support.sas.com/downloads/package.htm?pid=2529. Note: It is a Windows-only installation.
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Once the installation file is downloaded, then double-click the dmp29-qkbct-win32.exe file to install it. Click Next.
Specify the location where you want to install the SAS QKB Customization Tools and then click Next.
Specify a name for the QKB instance and then click Next.
Click Install to start the installation process.
When the installation is complete, select Next.
Click Finish to close the installation wizard.
Open the SAS QKB Customization Tools application. Note: A shortcut to the application is created on the desktop of the windows you installed it on. It is called SAS QKB Definition Editor 2.9.
The tool is essentially a pared-down version of Data Management Studio with only the components required for customizing the SAS Quality Knowledge Base (QKB).
Add a copy of the QKB you want to customize. You may have to copy (or FTP) the QKB files to a location where the SAS QKB Definition Editor application can access them. Note: Out-of-the-box SAS QKBs can be downloaded from here if needed.
Now that the QKB has been added to the SAS QKB Definition Editor, you can open the QKB for editing.
You can now begin customizing the QKB using the SAS QKB Definition Editor to suit your needs. However, it is recommended that you take some training before you start customizing the QKB. Making changes to the QKB is very powerful and affects your jobs that rely on it. The training helps you understand the various customization editors, the creation of data types and definitions as well as discusses the DEV-TEST-PROD process of customizing the QKB.
For more information on customizing the QKB:
- SAS Data Quality: Customizing the SAS Quality Knowledge Base (QKB) YouTube video
- Data Management Studio: Understanding the Quality Knowledge Base Public training course
- Data Management Studio: Creating a New Data Type in the Quality Knowledge Base Public training course
- SAS Quality Knowledge Base (QKB) documentation
- Data Management Studio 2.9 Select the topic Administration Riser Bar > Managing and Customizing QKBs.
Once you have tested your QKB changes, then copy (or FTP) the production QKB files to where it is needed by the product you are using it in. Keep a back-up of the production copy of the QKB for future customizations. If the QKB is going to be used in SAS Viya, then you need to a create a .qarc file for the QKB files. You can download the tool to create the .qarc file for the QKB from here.
In conclusion, you no longer need Data Management Studio and Customize licensing to be able to customize the QKB, you can now simply use the SAS QKB Definition Editor.
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