How Is Address Checks Work

Definition

Asserts that every value in a text field is an address containing all the required parts.

Overview

The Is Address rule parses a free-text address column and checks that each value carries the parts you list under Required Labels. The platform recognizes the components of an address (the road, the city, the state, the country, the post code) inside the text; the row passes when every required part is present, and fails when one is missing. Because the parts are configurable, the same rule can express a strict postal requirement or a loose one.

Typical use cases:

• Validate that shipping addresses carry everything a carrier needs before a label is bought.
• Catch partial addresses collected by a form that made fields optional.
• Check that a free-text address column can be parsed at all before a normalization job runs.

Field Scope

Single: The rule evaluates exactly one text field per check.

Accepted Types

General Properties

The filter allows you to define a subset of data upon which the rule will operate.

It requires a valid Spark SQL expression that determines the criteria rows in the DataFrame should meet. This means the expression specifies which rows the DataFrame should include based on those criteria. Since it's applied directly to the Spark DataFrame, traditional SQL constructs like WHERE clauses are not supported.

O_TOTALPRICE > 1000

C_MKTSEGMENT = 'BUILDING'

WHERE O_TOTALPRICE > 1000

WHERE C_MKTSEGMENT = 'BUILDING'

O_ORDERPRIORITY = '1-URGENT' AND O_ORDERSTATUS = 'O'

(L_SHIPDATE = '1998-09-02' OR L_RECEIPTDATE = '1998-09-01') AND L_RETURNFLAG = 'R'

WHERE O_ORDERPRIORITY = '1-URGENT' AND O_ORDERSTATUS = 'O'

O_TOTALPRICE > 1000, O_ORDERSTATUS = 'O'

RIGHT(
    O_ORDERPRIORITY,
    LENGTH(O_ORDERPRIORITY) - INSTR('-', O_ORDERPRIORITY)
) = 'URGENT'

LEVENSHTEIN(C_NAME, 'Supplier#000000001') < 7

RIGHT(
    O_ORDERPRIORITY,
    LENGTH(O_ORDERPRIORITY) - CHARINDEX('-', O_ORDERPRIORITY)
) = 'URGENT'

EDITDISTANCE(C_NAME, 'Supplier#000000001') < 7

O_ORDERSTATUS IN (
    SELECT DISTINCT O_ORDERSTATUS
    FROM {{_qualytics_self}}
    WHERE O_TOTALPRICE > 1000
)

O_ORDERSTATUS IN (
    SELECT DISTINCT O_ORDERSTATUS
    FROM ORDERS
    WHERE O_TOTALPRICE > 1000
)

Specific Properties

Is Address has one rule-specific property:

Anomaly Types

Evaluation Flow

Every Is Address check follows the same four-step evaluation flow:

1. Apply the filter clause. If the check has a filter set, only rows matching the filter expression continue to the next step. Rows outside the filter are ignored and cannot contribute to the violation count.
2. Read the field value as text. The platform reads the row's value for the selected field.
3. Parse the address and look for the required parts. The row passes when every part listed under Required Labels is found in the value, and fails when one is missing.
4. Apply coverage. At 100% coverage, any failing row causes the check to fail. Below 100% coverage, the check fails only when the passing fraction drops below the threshold (see Coverage and Tolerance).

Required Labels Define the Rule

The check is only as strict as the parts you require. Requiring just road and city accepts most partial addresses; adding post code and country makes the rule strict enough for shipping. Pick the parts your downstream process actually needs: every extra part you require turns a legitimate but differently formatted address into an anomaly.

Parsing Is Best-Effort, Not Authoritative

The platform recognizes the parts of an address from the text, which works well on conventional formats and less well on unusual ones. The check tells you an address is missing a part; it does not tell you the address exists or that mail would reach it. Address verification against a postal database is a separate concern outside the platform.

International Formats Vary

Address conventions differ by country: some put the post code before the city, some omit the state entirely. A single check requiring state will flag every address from a country that does not use one. Scope the check with a filter per country, or require only the parts that are universal across the populations in the column.

NULL Handling

The check passes NULL values: a row with NULL in the evaluated field is not counted as a violation. Is Address only asserts that present values carry the required parts.

An empty string is a present value with no parts at all, so it is reported. If the field must also be populated, pair the check with Not Null.

The Filter Clause

The filter clause is a SQL WHERE expression applied before the evaluation. Filtered-out rows are ignored entirely (they cannot trigger a violation and are not counted in the totals).

When a filter is set, both the Record Anomaly and the Shape Anomaly messages end with [filter: <expression>] so the evaluated scope is visible in the alert.

Coverage and Tolerance

Coverage is a fractional value between 0 and 1 that defines the minimum fraction of evaluated rows that must pass:

• 1.0 (100%, default): every row in the filtered set must pass. Any failing row causes the check to fail. This is the strictest setting.
• < 1.0: the check tolerates a fraction of rows failing. The check fails only when the fraction of passing rows drops below the threshold.

Lower coverage values are useful when a small, known fraction of failures is expected. Use coverage carefully: a 0.5% tolerance can mask a real regression that happens to fall just under the threshold.

See Also