Column meaning
A type says what a column can hold; its meaning says what the values are. Descriptions, units and intents travel with the data, so a colleague, a dataset reader or an AI assistant can use a table correctly without asking the person who built it.
A column's name is rarely enough. amount might be euros or thousands of dollars; id might be unique or not. Mycorr lets you record that once, on the column, where every view, export reader and MCP client can see it.
Describe a table
In the details pane, the Description section holds a few sentences about the whole table: what one row represents, where the data comes from, how current it is. Click + in the section's header to add one, or click the text to edit it.
A good description answers "what is one row?" first: "One row per battery recycling company: its headquarters country, the chemistries it recycles, and the public sources each claim comes from."
Tables published in a public catalog dataset must have a description.
Describe a column
- Select the column's header.
- Choose Add description on the action bar.
- Write what a value means, including anything the name hides: the unit if you don't set one, how it was measured, what an empty cell means.
Once a column has a description, an icon beside it in the Columns list opens it; Edit description and Remove description change it.
Units
A unit tells everyone, and every tool, how to read a number: kilograms or tonnes, euros or US dollars, single units or millions.
- Select a numeric column's header.
- Choose Set unit.
- Search the catalogue by name or symbol, or filter by quantity kind (mass, length, currency and so on). For a column whose name suggests one, the picker opens on a suggestion, marked Suggested from column name; choose Pick different to ignore it.
- Optionally pick a scale: µ, m, %, (none), K, M or B. A revenue column in millions of dollars is US dollar at scale M.
- Click Apply.
The unit then shows beside the column's type. Clear assignment removes it.
Units come from QUDT, a public catalogue of units of measurement, and include every ISO 4217 currency. Because a unit is a catalogue entry rather than free text, two tables that both say kilogram mean the same thing, and an AI assistant can compare or convert them safely.
Setting a unit changes no data. It makes a new table version, so people who import the table see the unit once you release that version.
Intents: required, unique, key
Intents record what you expect of a column's values. Set them with Edit intents:
| Intent | Means |
|---|---|
| Required | Every row should have a value |
| Unique | No two rows should share a value |
| Key | The column is part of the table's key: together, the key columns identify a row |
Intents are hints, not rules. Mycorr doesn't refuse an edit that breaks one, because a half-cleaned table still has to be workable. Instead, the table audit tells you where the data falls short. Unique and Key apply to text, ID, whole-number, date and date & time columns.
Intents matter beyond the canvas: an AI assistant reads them before joining or counting, and a catalog dataset can't be published while its key holds duplicate or empty values.
Run the table audit
In the details pane, click Run table audit in the Columns section's header. The Table Audit grades every column against its intents:
- Required columns with empty cells.
- Unique columns with duplicated values.
- Whether the Key columns form a Valid primary key, or list the duplicate keys.
Re-run audit checks again after you fix the data.
Column statistics
Statistics, in a column's ⋮ menu in the Columns list, summarizes its values: row count, empty cells, distinct values and duplicates, and depending on the type the range, mean and median, or the earliest and latest dates.
Clean up values
Four tools reshape a column's values. Each writes a new column (or a new table) unless it says otherwise, so the original stays as it was.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Split column values | Splits a text column on a delimiter, into a list of all the parts or into one part chosen by position |
| Map to reference | Matches messy values to a clean reference column, such as "Deutschland" and "germany " to Germany, suggesting fuzzy matches for you to confirm. Up to 1,000 distinct values a side |
| Search & replace | Finds and replaces text, as plain text, ignoring case, whole words or a regular expression with capture groups. Writes a new column, or replaces in place |
| Extract Unique Values | Creates a new table holding a column's distinct values, or the distinct combinations of several selected columns. A quick way to build a reference table |
Search & replace in place can't be undone. Take a checkpoint first if you might want the old values back.
Split, Map to reference and Search & replace work on text columns that hold values.
Who can change meaning
Descriptions, units and intents are part of the table, so the people who can edit the table set them. On an imported table they are read-only: they come from the owner's release.