Paxata refers to its suite of cloud-based data quality, integration, enrichment and governance products as "Adaptive Data Preparation." The software is intended for business analysts, who need to combine data from a variety of sources, then check the data for duplicates, empty fields, outliers, trends and integrity issues before conducting analysis or visualization in a third-party software tool. It uses algorithms and machine-learning to automate certain aspects of data preparation. For example, it may automatically detect records belonging to the same person or address, even if the information is formatted differently in each record in different data sets.
The software has a spreadsheet-based user interface. Patterns and anomalies in the data are color-coded in the spreadsheet. Then users are provided with instructions on how to resolve data quality issues or to supplement the data with contextual information. Data sets and related quality issues can also be addressed in a collaborative environment through the "Paxata Share" feature. It runs on Apache Spark.
According to analyst firm Ovum, the software is made possible through advances in predictive analytics, machine learning and the NoSQL data caching methodology. The software uses semantic algorithms to understand the meaning of a data table's columns and pattern recognition algorithms to find potential duplicates in a data-set. It also uses indexing, text pattern recognition and other technologies traditionally found in social media and search software.
One of the software's users is dairy producer Danone, which uses the software so that business staff can create their own reports on merchandising, supply chain and product data, without the IT department.
