Unstructured Data

Unstructured data (or unstructured information) is information that either does not have a pre-defined data model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner. Unstructured information is typically text-heavy, but may contain data such as dates, numbers, and facts as well.

What is an example of unstructured data?

Unstructured data files often include text and multimedia content. Examples include e-mail messages, word processing documents, videos, photos, audio files, presentations, webpages and many other kinds of business documents.

What is unstructured data used for?

Internally, almost every corporate department uses unstructured data in some form; externally, unstructured data is used to monitor and report on movements of shipments and/or assets with sensors and more. When will businesses use unstructured data? Unstructured data is used in every company and organization.

How unstructured data is stored?

Unstructured data is BIG – really BIG in most cases. Data in HDFS is stored as files. Hadoop does not enforce on having a schema or a structure to the data that has to be stored. Analyzing unstructured data typically involves complex algorithms.

What is the difference between Structured data & Unstructured data?

Structured data is data that can be both syntactically and semantically described by a straightforward format description. See the full article for more details.

Why unstructured data is important?

Unstructured data isn’t well organized or easy to access, but companies who analyze this data and integrate it into their information management landscape can significantly improve employee productivity. It can also help businesses capture important decisions and the supporting evidence for those decisions.