The present invention relates to data cleansing, and in particular performing the semantic standardization process within a database before the transform portion of the extract-transform-load (ETL) process. Provided are a method, system and computer program product for standardizing data within a database engine, configuring the standardization function to determine at least one standardized value for at least one data value by applying the standardization table in a context of at least one data value, receiving a database query identifying the standardization function, at least one database value and the context of the data, and invoking the standardization function.