Data Quality Services (DQS) was used to cleanse data through domain knowledge and supervised matching. An older DQS project typically created a knowledge base, applied its rules to source records, and reviewed ambiguous results.
Concepts and context
A data-quality domain can standardize recognized values such as city names or postal codes. A project profiles source fields, applies accepted mappings and rules, and separates automatic corrections from records that need manual approval.
Practical application
For a modern implementation, profile missing values, normalize formatting, enforce relational constraints, maintain approved reference sets, and record exactly which rows were changed. A simple first step can be SELECT CustomerID, UPPER(LTRIM(RTRIM(City))) AS NormalizedCity FROM dbo.CustomerStaging.
Compatibility and cautions
DQS was removed from SQL Server 2025 (17.x). Older installation and client screenshots apply only to earlier supported versions such as SQL Server 2022. Do not treat approximate matches as reliable without human validation.
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