Checksum is a calculated value that is used to determine the integrity of data. Checksum serves as a unique identifier for the data (a file, a text string, or a table row). If the data changes then so does the checksum value. This makes it easy to verify the integrity of the data.
Checksum is very useful in data warehousing especially when working with very wide slow changing dimensions. It takes less processing power to compare one checksum field than to compare all fields within dimension.
dbSL ETL software can calculate check sum for entire file, string or row of data. it supports following algorithms CRC16, CRC24, CRC32, Adler32, CRC64, eDonkey, eMule, MD4, MD5, RIPEMD160, SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512,Whirlpool. It can return the data in HEX or BASE64 format.