Managing expressions
The search and type expressions define logic used by the legacy profiler to identify sensitive information. Refer to Discovering Your Sensitive Data for an overview of expressions and related concepts.
Profile expressions
The column and data level expressions use regex text patterns on column meta-data and the data within the column, respectively, to identify sensitive data.
Column and data level expressions are case insensitive.
Type expressions can limit matches with column-level expressions by data type. A Type Expression consists of a user-chosen name, a data type, an optional minimum field length, and a domain to which the constraint applies. The supported data types are String, Number, Date, and Binary. Each type represents a number of native datatypes in the database.
For String type, all character types supported by the database such as VARCHAR, NVARCHAR, CLOB, and NCLOB are considered String types for profiling. The minLength parameter considers the length specification of the column type, which may be characters or bytes. For example, Oracle supports VARCHAR2 fields measuring in either characters or in bytes. A VARCHAR2(20) column can hold 20 characters, whereas a VARCHAR2(20 BYTE) column can hold 20 bytes, which may be fewer than 20 characters if multibyte characters are present. A type expression with a minLength of 20 will match to both.
For Number type, all numeric types are considered Number types by the profiling logic, including INTEGER, FLOAT, BIG_INTEGER, etc. The minLength parameter considers the number of base-10 digits supported by the type. For floating-point values, minLength refers to the integral part of the number.
For Date type, the Date type includes all calendar date and date/time types, such as DATE and LOCAL_DATE_TIME types. The minLength parameter is not permitted for Date Type Expressions.
For Binary type, the Binary type includes large object types such as BLOB and BINARY. The minLength parameter considers the maximum storage size of the column in bytes.
If there is more than one Type Expression assigned to a domain, then a column will match for the domain if the regular expression matches, and at least one of the type expressions match. For example, dates of birth are often stored in string types instead of dates, so you might have a string type expression and a date type expression assigned to the Date of Birth domain to allow columns of either type to match. Two Type Expressions of the same type cannot be assigned to the same domain in the same profile set. If there are no Type Expressions assigned to a domain, then the profile expression alone will determine matching without regard to data type.
Like Profile Expressions, Profile Type Expressions must be part of a profile set to be effective. Profile Type Expressions have no effect on Data Level Profiling.
Profile Type Expressions are only supported for database profiling. They have no effect on profiling of file data.
As of version 9.0, only Oracle and MSSQL Server are fully supported. On other platforms, Type Expressions may result in unexpected matches.
Managing expressions
In order to manage search and Type Expressions, select Expressions using the navigation panel on the left-hand side of the Settings tab.

This panel has Search Expression and Type Expression tabs that select which type of expression is visible.
The expressions on the screen can be filtered or sorted by the various informational fields by clicking on the respective field. More information on grid filtering and sorting can be found here.
To add a search expression
Click the Search Expression tab near the top of the Expressions screen.
Click the Add Search Expression button at the upper right.
Select a Domain from the Domain dropdown.
Domains are used by Profiling jobs to determine the masking algorithm to apply to your sensitive data. When an Expression is matched, the Profiling job will associate the specified Domain to the sensitive data. The Masking Engine comes out of the box with over 30 pre-defined Domains. Domains can be added, edited, and deleted from the Settings Domains screen.
Enter the following information for the Expression:
Expression Name: The name used to select this expression as part of a Profiler Set.
Select an Expression Level for the Expression:
Column Level: To identify sensitive data based on column names.
Data Level: To identify sensitive data based on data values, not column names.
Enter the Expression Text: The regular expression used to identify sensitive data.
To add a type of expression
Click the Type Expression tab near the top of the Expressions screen.
Click the Add Type Expression button at the upper right.
Set a value for Expression Name and select a Domain as you would for a search expression.
Select Constraints (Data Type) for the expression: String, Numeric, Binary, Date.
Set a Minimum Column Length for the data type if desired.
Note: Length constraints are not applied to large object types such as CLOBs and BLOBs.
For example, to ensure that column-level profiling only identifies a column with the FIRST_NAME domain, if the column is a string type and has a capacity of at least 5 characters, add the type constraint shown below.
When you are finished, click Save.
To edit an expression
Click the ... indicator in the Action column to the right of the Expression and choose Edit.
To delete an expression
Click the ... indicator in the Action column to the right of the Expression and choose Delete. Deletion will be blocked if the expression is currently assigned to one or more profile sets.
Searching and filtering expressions
The profile-expressions/search
and profile-type-expressions/search
endpoints allow for searching and filtering of profile expressions and profile-type expressions. More information on syntax can be found at API Calls for Searching and Filtering.