Data quality monitoring FAQ

Straight answers to the questions teams ask most when evaluating data quality monitoring. For background, start with What is data quality monitoring? or browse the glossary.

How do I monitor data quality without exposing raw data to a vendor?

Run a monitoring agent inside your own environment instead of shipping rows to an outside service. AIMO's agent runs as an open Docker image in your network, connects to your database locally, and sends out only aggregates and metadata — counts, grouped results, and analysis payloads. Bulk raw rows never leave your environment, so there is no firewall opening and no third-party access to your database.

What is the difference between data quality and data observability?

Data quality is about whether the content of your tables is correct — completeness, freshness, valid ranges, consistent relationships. Data observability is the broader discipline of understanding the health of your whole data system, often including pipeline lineage and infrastructure. AIMO focuses on table-level data quality with learned outlier detection.

Can AI generate data quality checks automatically?

Yes. AIMO analyses your schema and a statistical profile of your data, then uses an LLM to propose monitor types, the columns to watch, and sensible bounds. You review and accept the suggestions, so you get broad coverage in minutes without hand-writing every rule.

How does AIMO detect outliers and anomalies?

After monitors run for a while, AIMO learns a model of "normal" from each monitor's historical values — a set of quantiles describing the typical level and the edges of the expected range for that specific metric. Each new reading is scored against that band; a value that lands outside it is flagged as an outlier and routed to you — far more robust than a fixed threshold. See outlier detection.

Which databases can I monitor?

The agent connects through SQLAlchemy and ships first-class support for PostgreSQL (including Databricks Lakebase), MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, Amazon Redshift, DuckDB, and SQLite. Each connection accepts either individual fields (host, user, …) or a complete SQLAlchemy URL. A Python library lets you add other SQLAlchemy-compatible databases and tie monitor calculations into your dataflows, so checks run right after a table finishes updating. See getting started.

Is AI-based data monitoring secure and GDPR-compliant?

Security is built in. There is no path from the AIMO cloud into your database — the agent connects outbound only, runs every query beside your data, and sends out aggregates and metadata rather than raw rows. Database credentials are encrypted on the agent with a passphrase that never leaves your environment; only the ciphertext is stored, so AIMO can never read or use them directly, and you should give the agent a read-only database role. Each agent authenticates with an asymmetric keypair (Ed25519 or RSA) and short-lived JWTs; human sign-in uses passkeys (WebAuthn), with no passwords. AIMO is EU-based and GDPR-ready, operated from Finland by Motify Data Mining. See security and the legal documents.

How do I get alerted when something breaks?

Alerts are delivered to email and Slack. You configure destinations and routing yourself in the UI, with severity (info, warning, error, critical) driving where each alert lands. Additional destination types — Microsoft Teams, Linear, and generic webhooks — can be set up and test-pinged from the same screen.

How long does setup take?

Minutes, not months. You run the Docker image, register in the UI, connect a database, analyse and choose tables, and accept the AI-generated monitors. AIMO then backfills history and begins monitoring — the backfill time scales with your data size. See getting started.

How much does data quality monitoring with AIMO cost?

Your first month includes up to three monitored tables at no charge. After that it is €10 per monitored table per month (excl. tax), with no per-seat fees and no platform fee. Add or remove tables in the UI and billing updates the next cycle. See pricing.