{"id":612840,"date":"2023-02-28T08:49:52","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T14:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/28\/unstructured-data-and-the-storage-it-needs\/"},"modified":"2023-02-28T08:49:52","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T14:49:52","slug":"unstructured-data-and-the-storage-it-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/28\/unstructured-data-and-the-storage-it-needs\/","title":{"rendered":"Unstructured data and the storage it needs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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IDC estimates that upwards of 80% of business information is\u00a0likely to be formed of unstructured data by 2025.<\/p>\n

And while \u201cunstructured\u201d can be something of a misnomer, because all files have some sort of metadata by which they can be searched and ordered, for example, there are huge volumes of such data in the hands of businesses.<\/p>\n

In this article, we look at what\u2019s particular to working with unstructured data and the storage \u2013 usually file or\u00a0object<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 that it needs.<\/p>\n

In the past, images, voice recordings, videos, chat logs and documents of varying kinds were largely just a storage liability and seen as a headache for anyone who needed to manage, organise and keep it secure.<\/p>\n

But now unstructured data is seen as a valuable source of business information. With analytics processing, value can be gained from it \u2013 for example, it\u2019s possible to run\u00a0AI\/ML<\/a>\u00a0against sets of advertisement images and map what site visitors see to click behaviour. Analysis of unstructured image data can create structured fields that can drive editorial decision-making.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, backups \u2013 long consigned to dusty and hard-to-access\u00a0tape<\/a>\u00a0archives \u2013 are now viewed as a potential data source for analytics processing. And with the threat of\u00a0ransomware<\/a>\u00a0high on the agenda, the necessity of backups to recover to is more pertinent than ever.<\/p>\n

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<\/i>Structured, unstructured, semi-structured<\/h3>\n

Unstructured data, broadly speaking, is data and information that does not conform to a predefined data model \u2013 in other words, information that is created and lives\u00a0outside a\u00a0relational database<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Business information generated by systems is most likely to be\u00a0structured, with customer and product details, order numbers, stock levels and shipment information created by a sales system and stored in its underlying database being typical examples.<\/p>\n

Those are more than likely SQL databases, configured with a table-based schema and data held in rows and columns that allow for very rapid writes and querying of the data, with very good transactional integrity. SQL\u00a0databases are at the heart of the most performant and mission-critical applications in use.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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<\/i>Unstructured\/semi-structured<\/h3>\n

Unstructured data is often created by people, and it includes email, social media posts, voice recordings, images, video, notes, and documents such as PDFs.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, most unstructured data can actually be what you\u2019d call semi-structured and though not held in a database \u2013 although that is possible \u2013 there is some structure there in its metadata.\u00a0For example, an image of a delivered item would, superficially, be unstructured \u2013 although metadata from the camera files makes it semi-structured.<\/p>\n

And then there are backup files, in which all an organisation\u2019s data is copied, compressed, encrypted and packaged into the (usually proprietary) format of the backup vendor.<\/p>\n

The fact that backups bundle together all types of data make it an unstructured data challenge, and one that has possibly more relevance than ever with the rise of the ransomware threat.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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<\/i>Unstructured and semi-structured storage needs<\/h3>\n

As we\u2019ve seen, unstructured data is more or less defined by the fact it is not created by use of a database. It may be the case that more structure is applied to unstructured data later in its life, but then it becomes something else.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019ll look at here are the key requirements for storage infrastructure for unstructured data.\u00a0These are:<\/p>\n