Introduction

big

What is big data? When we think about big data the first thing comes in our mind is “Is big data a tool or a product”. Big data is not a tool or a product. Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data (structured, semi-structured and unstructured). Okay, let me simplify the term structured and unstructured data. I am not going into detail so I am just giving an overview.

Structured data: Structured data refers to relational database like sql, oracle, etc.

Semi-Structured data: Semi-structured data is a kind of structured data but it does not confirm the structure. Example xml and json.

Unstructured data: Unstructured data refers to non-relational database or you can say no-sql database like mongodb, documentdb, bigtable, etc.

I will talk more on this in another article.

Component of big data

According to American IT research and advisory firm Gartner big data follow “3Vs” model. 3V stand for Volume, Variety and Velocity.

Volume:

As name suggests it indicate the volume of data. After spending some time on Google I found some interesting facts about the data generated every day. You can check on gwava.com. There are so many sources. Some of them are:

  1. Social Media
  2. Sensor network
  3. Search data
  4. Email
  5. Military Surveillance
  6. Medicals

structure

Variety: As the name suggests it indicate the variety of data. You can use data as document, email, audio, video, images and machine generated data from sensors, etc.

Variety

Velocity: Velocity manages the streaming of data and the movement of data at high speed.

I hope this is helpful.