11 DATA AND DATABASES
Physical databases come in many different shapes and sizes and database technology is constantly evolving, as are the types of data we wish to keep in our databases.
THE DATA LANDSCAPE
We can consider the ‘data landscape’ as consisting of six categories of data: structured data, unstructured data, semi-structured data, master data, meta data and, finally, what has become known as ‘big data’. These six categories, and their relationships to each other, are shown in Figure 11.1.
Figure 11.1 The data landscape
The simplest of these categories to understand is structured data – the numbers, dates and short character strings ...
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