Question

In a business intelligence perspective differentiate between Structured unstructured and semi-structured data within an organization. Giving usages and example

Answer 1

Structured Data :

• This type of data has set of valid defined attributes and can be easily stored in a structural form with their designated fields
• This type of data is highly organized and can be easily mapped to a SQL database
• This data is easy to manage,query or modify.
• Example : Data stored in SQL or RDBMS
• Usage : In accounting system data can be organized into
  • Customer name
  • Balance
  • Account number

Unstructured Data :

• This type of data does not have a pre-defined organized set of attributes or model
• The same attribute may contain multiple data types.Eg. image of different formats
• Since the data has not been categorized ,hence it is difficult to manage and maintain in long run
• Difficult to analyse and query
• Example : Email messages
• Usage : Usually bigger businesses generate unstructured data most of the time and later the data is cleaned and organized

Semi Structured Data:

• This type of data does not incoporate any fixed set of models but do have a pattern or underlying structure
• The data can be analyzed and queried to a extent.
• This type of data is easily scalable and making it simpler to fit into new technologies.
• Example : JSON,XML
• Usage: Used in API's in which JSON data is sent and recieved among different frameworks