From your first saved operation to writing a complete application in XBasic, if you clock in with Alpha Five, you're turning into a developer. It's a gradual and insidious process that, happily, is inevitable, and often so absorbing that it's easy to forget about its raison d'etre. In English, that would be your data.

Data is unprocessed information either input through data entry, one keystroke at a time, or through a data exchange where existing data is imported, or appended into a table established to receive it, and as such is typically not usable until structured and organized into information by programs such as Alpha Five.

Unlike word processors, where processing principles are virtually the same for most documents regardless of the content or its format, in a database the marriage of the tool to the raw material with which it works is virtually as important as the tool itself.

High quality, clean data is more than just a "pretty face." It affects every aspect of your database applications from performance to accuracy. Poor data quality can not only inhibit your database operations in much the same way using low octane gas will compromise the performance of a race car, but disregarding your data's quality is a sure way to compromise your database's veracity and, worse, those business decisions you will base on what it tells you.

Data quality can be distilled down to three basic criteria:

• Alignment - The same data, consistently representing the same attribute of each record is always stored in its assigned field throughout the table; First Name fields don't contain prefixes; Company fields don't contain Addresses (and visa versa); Phone Numbers either include area codes and extensions or they don't, storing them in other fields.
  
  
• Consistency - All data elements in each field are standardized - formatted, written, abbreviated, punctuated, cased - uniformly throughout the database. For example Address fields should conform to the USPS Addressing Standards and CASS coded for accuracy. (This isn't just to save serious dollars in postage, but also helps you identify duplicate records and determine geographic parameters, which can later be used in geocoding latitudes and longitudes, census information and other kinds of data enhancement used in targeted marketing campaigns.)
  
  
• Accuracy - Data is complete, accurately entered and is currently true, where the entity it represents is concerned. Again, the most obvious example of this is addresses. A person's address information may be clean, accurately written and has CASS-qualified - establishing that there is such a location; but is it still the correct one…