CIMA E1 Syllabus B. Technology In A Digital World - Forms and Sources of Big Data - Notes ^{3 / 12}

Structured

This is in a field or data record (such as numbers, dates), so easy to analyse and easily accessible by database structured query languages.

This is in a standardised format, so is easy to analyse, store and search.

Semi-structured

This is not in a field but can be analysed and organised

Eg. E-mails

These contain structured data such as the date, sender name and email address but the actual content of the email is unstructured.

Unstructured

This is not in data fields (such as video, audio and images), therefore difficult to analyse, manage and search.

Around 80% of business data is unstructured which makes it difficult to analyse, manage and search.