- Generally referring to large quantities of information
- Companies are collecting and processing more data today than ever before
- Data must contain information, and mean something (it is subjective)
- Therefore, we need structured data
- Types of structure
- Graph data
- Eg RDF (Relational Data Format)
- There can be loops
- Hierarchical Data - Trees
- Eg XML, JSON
- Strictly child-parent, no loops
- Structured plain-text data
- Eg CSV (comma-separated values)
- Very basic table representation
- Challenges with Data:
- How to get information from data
- How to update data
- How to keep data consistent
- How to deal with huge amounts of data
- How to deal with concurrent access to data