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Quickstart

In this short tutorial we will guide you through a series of steps that will help you getting started using SDV.

Model the dataset using SDV

To model a multi table, relational dataset, we follow two steps. In the first step, we will load the data and configures the meta data. In the second step, we will use the SDV API to fit and save a hierarchical model. We will cover these two steps in this section using an example dataset.

Load example data

SDV comes with a toy dataset to play with, which can be loaded using the sdv.load_demo function:

In [1]: from sdv import load_demo

In [2]: metadata, tables = load_demo(metadata=True)

This will return two objects:

  1. A Metadata object with all the information that SDV needs to know about the dataset.

In [3]: metadata
Out[3]: 
Metadata
  root_path: .
  tables: ['users', 'sessions', 'transactions']
  relationships:
    sessions.user_id -> users.user_id
    transactions.session_id -> sessions.session_id


In [4]: metadata.visualize();
../_images/quickstart_1.png

For more details about how to build the Metadata for your own dataset, please refer to the Relational Metadata guide.

  1. A dictionary containing three pandas.DataFrames with the tables described in the metadata object.

In [5]: tables
Out[5]: 
{'users':    user_id country gender  age
 0        0      US      M   34
 1        1      UK      F   23
 2        2      ES   None   44
 3        3      UK      M   22
 4        4      US      F   54
 5        5      DE      M   57
 6        6      BG      F   45
 7        7      ES   None   41
 8        8      FR      F   23
 9        9      UK   None   30,
 'sessions':    session_id  user_id  device       os  minutes
 0           0        0  mobile  android       23
 1           1        1  tablet      ios       12
 2           2        2  tablet  android        8
 3           3        3  mobile  android       13
 4           4        4  mobile      ios        9
 5           5        5  mobile  android       32
 6           6        6  mobile      ios        7
 7           7        7  tablet      ios       21
 8           8        8  mobile      ios       29
 9           9        9  tablet      ios       34,
 'transactions':    transaction_id  session_id           timestamp  amount  cancelled
 0               0           0 2019-01-01 12:34:32   100.0      False
 1               1           1 2019-01-01 12:42:21    55.3      False
 2               2           2 2019-01-07 17:23:11    79.5      False
 3               3           3 2019-01-10 11:08:57   112.1       True
 4               4           4 2019-01-10 21:54:08   110.0       True
 5               5           5 2019-01-11 11:21:20    76.3      False
 6               6           6 2019-01-22 14:44:10    89.5      False
 7               7           7 2019-01-23 10:14:09   132.1       True
 8               8           8 2019-01-27 16:09:17    68.0      False
 9               9           9 2019-01-29 12:10:48    99.9      False}

Fit a model using the SDV API.

First, we build a hierarchical statistical model of the data using SDV. For this we will create an instance of the sdv.SDV class and use its fit method.

During this process, SDV will traverse across all the tables in your dataset following the primary key-foreign key relationships and learn the probability distributions of the values in the columns.

In [6]: from sdv import SDV

In [7]: sdv = SDV()

In [8]: sdv.fit(metadata, tables)

Sample data from the fitted model

Once the modeling has finished you are ready to generate new synthetic data using the sdv instance that you have.

For this, all you have to do is call the sample_all method from your instance passing the number of rows that you want to generate:

In [9]: sampled = sdv.sample_all()

This will return a dictionary identical to the tables one that we passed to the SDV instance for learning, filled in with new synthetic data.

Note

Only the parent tables of your dataset will have the specified number of rows, as the number of child rows that each row in the parent table has is also sampled following the original distribution of your dataset.

In [10]: sampled
Out[10]: 
{'users':    user_id country gender  age
 0        0      DE      F   26
 1        1      UK      M   24
 2        2      ES      F   33
 3        3      UK    NaN   25
 4        4      ES    NaN   24
 5        5      UK      F   29
 6        6      UK      M   31
 7        7      FR      M   49
 8        8      ES      M   41
 9        9      US      F   22,
 'sessions':    session_id  user_id  device       os  minutes
 0           0        0  mobile      ios       20
 1           1        1  tablet      ios       16
 2           2        2  mobile      ios       11
 3           3        3  mobile  android       34
 4           4        4  tablet      ios       31
 5           5        5  tablet      ios        7
 6           6        6  mobile  android       12
 7           7        7  mobile  android       13
 8           8        8  mobile      ios       13
 9           9        9  mobile      ios       13,
 'transactions':    transaction_id  session_id           timestamp  amount  cancelled
 0               0           0 2019-01-29 05:13:58    73.3      False
 1               1           1 2019-01-01 12:34:32    68.1      False
 2               2           2 2019-01-19 07:47:50   125.2       True
 3               3           3 2019-01-15 08:26:51   106.8      False
 4               4           4 2019-01-27 14:14:41    74.9      False
 5               5           5 2019-01-01 12:34:32    80.7       True
 6               6           6 2019-01-08 11:05:22    87.2       True
 7               7           7 2019-01-19 19:12:45    70.7      False
 8               8           8 2019-01-17 12:27:03   100.8       True
 9               9           9 2019-01-08 02:57:15    99.4      False}

Saving and Loading your model

In some cases, you might want to save the fitted SDV instance to be able to generate synthetic data from it later or on a different system.

In order to do so, you can save your fitted SDV instance for later usage using the save method of your instance.

In [11]: sdv.save('sdv.pkl')

The generated pkl file will not include any of the original data in it, so it can be safely sent to where the synthetic data will be generated without any privacy concerns.

Later on, in order to sample data from the fitted model, we will first need to load it from its pkl file.

In [12]: sdv = SDV.load('sdv.pkl')

After loading the instance, we can sample synthetic data using its sample_all method like before.

In [13]: sampled = sdv.sample_all(5)

In [14]: sampled
Out[14]: 
{'users':    user_id country gender  age
 0       10      ES      F   57
 1       11      BG      F   22
 2       12      UK    NaN   22
 3       13      US      M   48
 4       14      ES      M   50,
 'sessions':    session_id  user_id  device       os  minutes
 0          10       10  mobile      ios       28
 1          11       11  tablet      ios       25
 2          12       12  tablet  android       10
 3          13       13  mobile  android       17
 4          14       14  tablet  android       25,
 'transactions':    transaction_id  session_id           timestamp  amount  cancelled
 0              10          10 2019-01-22 17:18:27   100.2      False
 1              11          11 2019-01-29 10:57:33    55.3      False
 2              12          12 2019-01-01 12:34:32    63.8      False
 3              13          13 2019-01-04 22:30:47   105.3       True
 4              14          14 2019-01-10 08:58:21    56.7      False}