Big Data

Question 1

What is volume?

Answer 1

• Information is now stored about online communications, purchases and transactions which produce a large amount of data, stored for a possibly infinite amount of time
• Unstructured data streaming from social media also forms another source of data
• As information has become possible to store digitally, there has been a decrease in the cost of storing it
• As a result, other issues have emerged, such as deciding what data is relevant

Question 2

What is velocity?

Answer 2

Data is streaming at unprecedented speed and must be dealt with promptly

Question 3

What is variety?

Answer 3

• Data today comes in all types of formats
• Structured, numeric data in traditional databases as well as unstructured text documents, email, video, audio, stock market data and financial transactions

Question 4

What is variability?

Answer 4

• Data flows can be highly inconsistent
• E.g., where an event or idea is trending in social media, it suddenly becomes popular and high profile
• Daily, seasonal, and event-triggered peak data loads can be challenging to manage
• This is even more with unstructured data

Question 5

What is complexity?

Answer 5

• Today’s data comes from multiple sources
• And it is still an undertaking to link, match, sort and transform data across systems, as well as to connect and correlate relationships