What is BIG Data?

 Big data is the collection of massive sets of data which are too large or complex to be processed using traditional data management tools, requiring specialised tools to be processed and analysed. 

There are three different types of big data; which are structured, unstructured, and semi-structured. 

Structured data is when massive amounts of data is stored and organised in an predefined format.  Structured data is usually stored in databases as it means that the data can be easily queried or searched using database query languages such as SQL. 

Unstructured data refers to a massive amount of unsorted and unorganised data, which requires specialised processing techniques to analyse and process the unstructured data into structured data. Unstructured data can be collected from many sources such as website and social media platforms, and can be collected in the form of emails, chat logs, videos, images or social media posts. 

Semi-structured data is a massive amount of unsorted data which has some properties such as metadata or tags which can be used to help organise the data. The organisational properties of unstructured data makes it easier to work with than unstructured data as it can be searched using big data tools, but not as easy as working with structured data. 

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