- Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data – both structured and unstructured – that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis. But it's not the amount of data that's important. It's what organizations do with the data that matters.
- It can be defined as data sets whose size or type is beyond the ability of traditional relational databases to capture, manage and process the data with low latency. Characteristics of big data include high volume, high velocity and high variety.
The phrase 'big data' is often used in enterprise settings to describe large amounts of data. It does not refer to a specific amount of data, but rather describes a dataset that cannot be stored or processed using traditional database software.
Today, big data can refer to large data sets or to systems and solutions developed to manage such large accumulations of data, as well as for the branch of computing devoted to this development. Definition - What does Big Data mean? Big data refers to a process that is used when traditional data mining and handling techniques cannot uncover the insights and meaning of the underlying data. Data that is unstructured or time sensitive or simply very large cannot be.
Examples of big data include the Google search index, the database of Facebook user profiles, and Amazon.com's product list. These collections of data (or 'datasets') are so large that the data cannot be stored in a typical database, or even a single computer. Instead, the data must be stored and processed using a highly scalable database management system. Big data is often distributed across multiple storage devices, sometimes in several different locations.
Many traditional database management systems have limits to how much data they can store. For example, an Access 2010 database can only contain two gigabytes of data, which makes it infeasible to store several petabytes or exabytes of data. Even if a DBMS can store large amounts of data, it may operate inefficiently if too many tables or records are created, which can lead to slow performance. Big data solutions solve these problems by providing highly responsive and scalable storage systems.
There are several different types of big data software solutions, including data storage platforms and data analytics programs. Some of the most common big data software products include Apache Hadoop, IBM's Big Data Platform, Oracle NoSQL Database, Microsoft HDInsight, and EMC Pivotal One.
Updated: August 27, 2013
Our big data research cuts across the departments, institutes and faculties, and we have many leading researchers exploring the world of data science and investigating the opportunities for government, business and society more broadly.
Based on their area of expertise, we asked some of our leading academics for their view on what big data means to them. 1. It's an umbrella term
'This is the age of data and we're only just beginning to discover that. I think as we look back, thirty years from now, we'll see this shift and the change of emphasis to data that's knitting machines together and changing the way we live.
Many traditional database management systems have limits to how much data they can store. For example, an Access 2010 database can only contain two gigabytes of data, which makes it infeasible to store several petabytes or exabytes of data. Even if a DBMS can store large amounts of data, it may operate inefficiently if too many tables or records are created, which can lead to slow performance. Big data solutions solve these problems by providing highly responsive and scalable storage systems.
There are several different types of big data software solutions, including data storage platforms and data analytics programs. Some of the most common big data software products include Apache Hadoop, IBM's Big Data Platform, Oracle NoSQL Database, Microsoft HDInsight, and EMC Pivotal One.
Updated: August 27, 2013
Our big data research cuts across the departments, institutes and faculties, and we have many leading researchers exploring the world of data science and investigating the opportunities for government, business and society more broadly.
Based on their area of expertise, we asked some of our leading academics for their view on what big data means to them. 1. It's an umbrella term
'This is the age of data and we're only just beginning to discover that. I think as we look back, thirty years from now, we'll see this shift and the change of emphasis to data that's knitting machines together and changing the way we live.
'Big data is an umbrella term. If you talk to a statistician, big data is developing mathematical methods to perform analysis; if you talk to a physicist, it's the huge data sets they get from their studies in astronomy and if you talk to a computer scientist it's about how you build platforms to support analysis. We're all coming in, as different bricks to lay the foundations for the subject that is big data.'
Professor Stephen Jarvis, Department of Computer Science
2. It's human interaction
'It's a new form of information. It's the type of data that's coming from the internet revolution – information that's being generated by human interactions in large technological systems, via the internet and also information that's released through connected devices. Its human interaction on a very large scale which gives us a lot of data points to better understand human behaviour and to use it, ultimately, to better forecast how human systems might develop over time.'
Big Data Definition Gdpr
Noteplan: markdown calendar 1 6 27. Associate Professor Tobias Preis, Warwick Business School
3. It's about potential
'About 15 years ago I was working with people in a field called ‘massive data' and this was the data generated, primarily, by large internet and telecommunications companies. Athentech perfectly clear workbench 3 6 3 1410. There was lots of information about what phone calls were happening, all the data connections, etc. We did a lot of work on the algorithmic foundations – how you understand the data and how you can scale it up to a much larger scale – and this approach went on for some time. My initial thought when I heard about big data was to ask ‘is this just a rebranding of massive data?' but it's trying to capture something more than that.
'The temptation when you hear ‘big data' is to focus on ‘big' and interpret it as meaning something large in structure and volume and that's certainly the chief way that big data strikes you, but underlying that is the fact that it can denote a large number of other things. It can refer to a lot of the potential of working with this amount of information, it can refer to the different kinds of ideas you can have, it can refer to the fact that, before, we had focussed data sets from a particular application area and you'd look at them in isolation. Now you can start to say that, across society, we have many more data sets being made available to us and so we can try to start to understand phenomena that we couldn't before by looking at a variety of different data coming from a variety of locations.'
Graham Cormode, Department of Computer Science
4. It addresses global problems
'History, of course, has a lot of data and particularly the field of economic history which I belong to. For me, data is ‘big' when it addresses global problems; wealth inequality, standards of living and so on. Big data applies very well to global issues.'
Professor Giorgio Riello, Department of History
Big Data Definition Ibm
5. It's a movement
'Big data is like a digital enlightenment. It's a movement – globally and culturally. But, whereas science and rationality were, for the enlightenment, the way for human progress, big data is very explicitly about controlling human behaviour. I think the advantages of big data are clearer for the commercial sector; when it comes to social systems, I'm less confident of the advantages. For me, big data is quite frightening; the methods being used to evaluate it are the methods being used to evaluate atoms. Big data is social physics basically, and, for me, it's missing all the social aspects that make us human and different to atoms.'
Big Data Definition Business
Associate Professor Emma Uprichard, Centre For Interdisciplinary Methodologies and Director of the Warwick Q-Step Centre.
