IBUC 2006 Abstract

Using Blaise to Apply Edits to Data held in an Input Data Warehouse
Fred Wensing ; Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia

Business survey and administrative data collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is delivered to an
Input Data Warehouse(IDW), which provides a single uniform database structure (using a star schema) to support
the various processes that need to be applied before final statistics are obtained. Through a system of status
codes, the data in the IDW for all collections and all providers can be tracked from raw value through to final
collected, imputed or estimated result.

An important process to be applied to all data is that of "editing" to detect inconsistencies and gaps in the collected
data. Blaise has particular strengths in being able to check for anomalies and deliver the results of its checking to
the operator. Blaise components can also be used to deliver the results of its checking to a system, thereby
enabling edits to be effectively applied in a "batch" mode.

This paper describes a system that has been developed to apply edits to data held in an IDW to support both online
and batch editing. The paper discusses the issues associated with transforming the data from IDW into a file
structure that can be acted on by Blaise (using the Blaise OLE DB interface), and the way that edit results can be
extracted (using the Blaise API) and delivered to a management system for scrutiny and possible resolution.

Contact: fred.wensing@abs.gov.au