Foofah

Abstract

Data transformation is a critical first step in modern data analysis: before any analysis can be done, data from a variety of sources must be wrangled into a uniform format that is amenable to the intended analysis and analytical software package. This data transformation task is tedious, time-consuming, and often requires programming skills beyond the expertise of data analysts. In this paper, we develop a technique to synthesize data transformation programs by example, reducing this burden by allowing the analyst to describe the transformation with a small input-output example pair, without being concerned with the transformation steps required to get there. We implemented our technique in a system, FOOFAH, that efficiently searches the space of possible data transformation operations to generate a program that will perform the desired transformation. We experimentally show that data transformation programs can be created quickly with FOOFAH for a wide variety of cases, with 60% less user effort than the well-known WRANGLER system.