Talend has come out with an open source tool for assessing data quality. If you're like most companies, your customer database is junked up with duplicate names with outdated titles and inconsistent information. Talend's Data Profiler brings order to this mess.Five-year-old Talend is a commercial open source company specializing in data integration. The company's Open Studio suite, introduced in 2006, includes tools for workflow modeling, graphical development, and ETL (extract, transform, load). The related Talend Integration Suite is a multiuser data-integration environment with a metadata repository. Open Studio is a no-cost download available under the GPL, while Integration Suite is offered as a subscription for enterprise IT environments.

But first things first. There's no sense integrating business data if it's not of high quality because you risk contaminating good information with bad, resulting in off-the-mark marketing programs and business intelligence. Talend's Open Profiler applies metrics so data can be monitored and measured. It analyzes text fields and provides graphical summary reports.

Talend calls its new data cleansing tool the industry's first open source "data profiler." The company has been busy adding new features, such as real-time change data capture, and striking partnerships for no-fuss connectivity to a wider range of systems, including SAP and Postgres.