UNSTRUCTURED DATA

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Almost all the data that is currently held in data warehouses is what we call structured data. This means that the data is organized into rows and columns , with ordered data types, etc.

Unstructured data is the kind of data that exists in documents, Web pages, journals, newspapers, etc. This data can be just as valuable as structured data. For instance, a severe drop or hike in the price of oil might have an effect on any of our customers that are highly sensitive to the price of oil, and any decision we might make about our dealings with these customers may well be influenced by such a change.

The attraction of unstructured data is that it tends to become available very much more quickly than the massaged, sanitized, and structured version. The challenge is to figure out just how we obtain, interpret, and present the information to our users. Also, such data is just as likely to yield valuable results from data mining as is structured data. Another challenge is to design the mining software that could undertake the task effectively.

Of all the technologies currently available, the Extensible Markup Language (XML) is the most promising for providing a solution to the interpretation of unstructured data.

only for RuBoard - do not distribute or recompile