Abstract: A computing device displays a user interface for a data preparation application, including a flow pane that visually represents a data preparation flow and a plurality of icons in a flow element palette. Using a feature/version matrix, the device determines that (i) a first subset of parameterized operations represented by a first subset of icons is not supported by the data preparation server application according to a version number of the data preparation server application and (ii) a second subset of parameterized operations represented by a second subset of icons is supported by the data preparation server application. The device provides a first indication that the parameterized operations represented by the icons in the first subset are unavailable to be inserted into the data preparation flow and displays a visual indication that each of the icons in the second subset is available to be inserted.

Abstract: A user interface displays: a first column comprising non-editable input strings retrieved from a data field; a second column comprising editable output strings initialized from the data field; and an expression window displaying a transformation function ƒ. The computer iteratively processes user inputs, each user input i providing a sample row transformation to edit an ith output string ti. Some user inputs i designate a contiguous substring ssi of the corresponding input string si. The contiguous substring expresses a causal basis for transforming the input string si. into the output string ti. The computer updates the transformation function ƒ according to the provided sample row transformations so that: ƒ(s1)=t1, . . . , ƒ(si)=ti; the transformation function ƒ specifies text or string position of at least one contiguous substring; and ƒ has minimal branching among possible transformation functions that satisfy the samples.

Abstract: A method executes at a computing device having a display, processors, and memory. The device displays a user interface for a data preparation application, including icons in a flow element palette, each icon representing a parameterized operation that can be inserted into data preparation flows in a flow pane of the user interface. A user places icons into the flow pane, visually defining flow elements for a flow that extracts data from selected data sources, transforms the extracted data, and exports the transformed data. The device retrieves the version number of a corresponding server application running on a server. Using a feature matrix, the device determines which flow elements are not supported by the data prep server application according to the version number. When there are flow elements not supported by the data prep server application running on the server, the device indicates this to the user.