Methods and systems are configured to determine a semantic meaning for data and generate data processing rules based on the semantic meaning of the data. The semantic meaning includes syntactical or contextual meaning for the data that is determined, for example, by profiling, by the data processing system, values stored in a field included in data records of one or more datasets; applying, by the data processing system, one or more classifiers to the profiled values; identifying, based on applying the one or more classifiers, one or more attributes indicative of a logical or syntactical characteristic for the values of the field, with each of the one or more attributes having a respective confidence level that is based on an output of each of the one or more classifiers. The attributes are associated with the fields and are used for generating data processing rules and processing the data.