A rename is only a rename when a person who knows the producing system says the field still means the same thing. The workbench can tell you two names resemble each other and two profiles resemble each other. It cannot tell you the third thing, and it will not pretend to.

Three questions, in order

  1. Do the names resemble each other? A similarity figure is computed, and near-identical names are surfaced as leads.
  2. Does the observed structure resemble each other? Compare inferred type, blank rate, distinct count, and length range across the pair.
  3. Does the field still mean the same thing? Only the producer, the source documentation, or a change ticket can answer this.

Worked example

In the bundled sample two mappings are committed. customer_id to client_id passes all three questions: the names are close, both profile as strings of the same short length, and the mapping note records that the producer confirmed identifier semantics are unchanged. warehouse_code to fulfillment_center passes none of the first question and still deserves committing, because the operational owner supplied the mapping directly. The lesson runs in both directions: high name similarity is not evidence of sameness, and low similarity is not evidence of difference.

The same sample contains a trap. order_date and order_timestamp look like an obvious rename, and the workbench does not commit it for you. It should not: one holds a calendar date and the other holds an instant with a timezone, and a consumer that parses dates will behave differently on the two. Left uncommitted, the pair correctly reports as one removal and one addition, and the finance workbook correctly reports a blocking missing column.

What a committed mapping does

A mapping is one-to-one in both directions and is applied before consumer policies are evaluated, so mapping customer_id to client_id satisfies a consumer that requires customer_id. Mappings carry a free-text note. Use it for the name of the person who confirmed the change and for anything still uncertain.

Method and limits

Similarity is computed on the header text alone. It has no dictionary, no synonym list, and no knowledge of your domain, so an internal abbreviation that everybody on the team understands will score low. A mapping records reviewer intent; it never rewrites a file and never generates a migration.

Do this in the app

Open the workbench and go to the Mappings view. Choose a baseline column and a candidate column, add the note naming who confirmed it, and commit. Identical names are refused, since they already pair automatically.

Related reading