According to one embodiment of the present invention, a system controls cleansing of data within a database system, and comprises a computer system including at least one processor. The system receives a data set from the database system, and one or more features of the data set are selected for determining values for one or more characteristics of the selected features. The determined values are applied to a data quality estimation model to determine data quality estimates for the data set. Problematic data within the data set are identified based on the data quality estimates, where the cleansing is adjusted to accommodate the identified problematic data. Embodiments of the present invention further include a method and computer program product for controlling cleansing of data within a database system in substantially the same manner described above.