Patent ID: 8166000

Claim:
An article of manufacture comprising a computer readable storage medium having code executed to perform operations, the operations comprising: processing a data set having a plurality of columns and records providing data for each of the columns; receiving selection of at least one format column for which format rules are to be generated; receiving selection of at least one predictor column; generating a format mask column for each selected format column in the data set, wherein the format mask column has format masks for the records in the data set; for records in the data set, converting a value in the at least one format column to a format mask representing a format of the value in the format column and storing the format mask in the format mask column of the record having the value from which the format mask was generated; and processing the at least one predictor column and the at least one format mask column to generate at least one format rule, wherein each format rule specifies a format mask associated with at least one condition in the at least one predictor column such that the rule predicts the format mask based on a value in the predictor column.