Data Dictionary Web Application

Create a data dictionary efficiently without code.

Deployed on Python Anywhere: http://datadictionary.pythonanywhere.com/

Introduction

Working with data has become an integral part of many professional domains with people of various levels of expertise involved in the collection and analysis process to improve their organization's goals. A best practice around data management is creating a data dictionary that provides information about the variables in the dataset—namely, the variable type and a definition that provides context and meaning, which can easily be understood across different users of the dataset.

How Data Dictionaries are Typically Created

Compiling a data dictionary is generally a manual process that requires the user of the data to document a definition for each variable in a spreadsheet or similar document. A statistical or programming tool may be used to identify the data types of each variable, but without background knowledge in a specific software or programming language, this information may be documented manually too.

Use This Tool to Organize Data Better

With this web application, you can easily create a data dictionary for your dataset that will identify the data types in the dataset and save definitions you created for previous data extracts so that you don't have to type your definitions again.

How It Works

Step 1: Register for an account Registering for an account enables the data dictionary tool to save your previous definitions for use each time you use the data dictionary tool.

Step 2: Upload a Dataset Upload a dataset with a .csv, .txt or .xlsx extension. Note: Although the dataset will not be stored to the server, keep in mind best practices when uploading any sensitive or identifying information in the dataset.

Step 3: Verify Types and Define Your Variables After uploading your dataset, the tool will identify the data types for each variable. There is an option to modify the default data type using the dropdown menu selection. In the "definition" column, you can write a definition for each variable in the textbox. If this is not your first time using this tool, your previous definitions are saved in a definition builder to be automatically used again if the variable existed in your previous datasets. You can navigate to the definition builder page to see what variables you have used so far.

Step 4: Export Your Data Dictionary The data dictionary can be exported in a table as an .xlsx or .pdf file.