D - Definitions
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D
dark data
Dark data is digital information an organization collects, processes and stores that is not currently being used for business purposes.
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data
In computing, data is information that has been translated into a form that is efficient for movement or processing.
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data activation
Data activation is a marketing approach that uses consumer information and data analytics to help companies gain real-time insight into target audience behavior and plan for future marketing initiatives.
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data aggregation
Data aggregation is any process whereby data is gathered and expressed in a summary form.
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data analytics (DA)
Data analytics (DA) is the process of examining data sets to find trends and draw conclusions about the information they contain.
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data architect
A data architect is an IT professional responsible for defining the policies, procedures, models and technologies to be used in collecting, organizing, storing and accessing company information.
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Data as a Service (DaaS)
Data as a Service (DaaS) is an information provision and distribution model in which data files (including text, images, sounds, and videos) are made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet.
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data catalog
A data catalog is a software application that creates an inventory of an organization's data assets to help data professionals and business users find relevant data for analytics uses.
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data classification
Data classification is the process of organizing data into categories that make it easy to retrieve, sort and store for future use.
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data cleansing (data cleaning, data scrubbing)
Data cleansing, also referred to as data cleaning or data scrubbing, is the process of fixing incorrect, incomplete, duplicate or otherwise erroneous data in a data set.
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Data Dredging (data fishing)
Data dredging -- sometimes referred to as data fishing -- is a data mining practice in which large data volumes are analyzed to find any possible relationships between them.
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data engineer
A data engineer is an IT professional whose primary job is to prepare data for analytical or operational uses.
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data fabric
A data fabric is an architecture and software offering a unified collection of data assets, databases and database architectures within an enterprise.
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data flow diagram (DFD)
A data flow diagram (DFD) is a graphical or visual representation using a standardized set of symbols and notations to describe a business's operations through data movement.
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data integration
Data integration is the process of combining data from multiple source systems to create unified sets of information for both operational and analytical uses.
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data lake
A data lake is a storage repository that holds a vast amount of raw data in its native format until it is needed for analytics applications.
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data lakehouse
A data lakehouse is a data management architecture that combines the key features and the benefits of a data lake and a data warehouse.
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data management as a service (DMaaS)
Data management as a service (DMaaS) is a type of cloud service that provides enterprises with centralized storage for disparate data sources.
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data mart (datamart)
A data mart is a repository of data that is designed to serve a particular community of knowledge workers.
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data mesh
Data mesh is a decentralized data management architecture for analytics and data science.
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data modeling
Data modeling is the process of creating a simplified visual diagram of a software system and the data elements it contains, using text and symbols to represent the data and how it flows.
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data observability
Data observability is a process and set of practices that aim to help data teams understand the overall health of the data in their organization's IT systems.
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data pipeline
A data pipeline is a set of network connections and processing steps that moves data from a source system to a target location and transforms it for planned business uses.
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data preprocessing
Data preprocessing, a component of data preparation, describes any type of processing performed on raw data to prepare it for another data processing procedure.
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data profiling
Data profiling refers to the process of examining, analyzing, reviewing and summarizing data sets to gain insight into the quality of data.
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data quality
Data quality is a measure of a data set's condition based on factors such as accuracy, completeness, consistency, reliability and validity.
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data silo
A data silo exists when an organization's departments and systems cannot, or do not, communicate freely with one another and encourage the sharing of business-relevant data.
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data stewardship
Data stewardship is the management and oversight of an organization's data assets to help provide business users with high-quality data that is easily accessible in a consistent manner.
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data structures
A data structure is a specialized format for organizing, processing, retrieving and storing data.
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data transformation
Data transformation is the process of converting data from one format, such as a database file, XML document or Excel spreadsheet, into another.
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data validation
Data validation is the practice of checking the integrity, accuracy and structure of data before it is used for a business operation.
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data virtualization
Data virtualization is an umbrella term used to describe an approach to data management that allows an application to retrieve and manipulate data without requiring technical details about the data.
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data warehouse
A data warehouse is a repository of data from an organization's operational systems and other sources that supports analytics applications to help drive business decision-making.
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data warehouse as a service (DWaaS)
Data warehouse as a service (DWaaS) is an outsourcing model in which a cloud service provider configures and manages the hardware and software resources a data warehouse requires, and the customer provides the data and pays for the managed service.
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database (DB)
A database is a collection of information that is organized so that it can be easily accessed, managed and updated.
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database administrator (DBA)
A database administrator (DBA) is the information technician responsible for directing or performing all activities related to maintaining a successful database environment.
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database as a service (DBaaS)
Database as a service (DBaaS) is a cloud computing managed service offering that provides access to a database without requiring the setup of physical hardware, the installation of software or the need to configure the database.
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database management system (DBMS)
A database management system (DBMS) is system software for creating and managing databases, allowing end users to create, protect, read, update and delete data in a database.
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database normalization
Database normalization is intrinsic to most relational database schemes. It is a process that organizes data into tables so that results are always unambiguous.
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database replication
Database replication is the frequent electronic copying of data from a database in one computer or server to a database in another -- so that all users share the same level of information.
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DataOps
DataOps is an Agile approach to designing, implementing and maintaining a distributed data architecture that will support a wide range of open source tools and frameworks in production.
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Db2
Db2 is a family of database management system (DBMS) products from IBM that serve a number of different operating system (OS) platforms.
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denormalization
Denormalization is the process of adding precomputed redundant data to an otherwise normalized relational database to improve read performance.
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deterministic/probabilistic data
Deterministic and probabilistic are opposing terms that can be used to describe customer data and how it is collected. Deterministic data is also referred to as first party data. Probabilistic data is information that is based on relational patterns and the likelihood of a certain outcome.
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dimension
In data warehousing, a dimension is a collection of reference information that supports a measurable event, such as a customer transaction.
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dimension table
In data warehousing, a dimension table is a database table that stores attributes describing the facts in a fact table.
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disambiguation
Disambiguation is the process of determining a word's meaning -- or sense -- within its specific context.
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What is data architecture? A data management blueprint
Data architecture is a discipline that documents an organization's data assets, maps how data flows through its systems and provides a blueprint for managing data.
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What is data governance and why does it matter?
Data governance is the process of managing the availability, usability, integrity and security of the data in enterprise systems, based on internal standards and policies that also control data usage.
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What is data management and why is it important?
Data management is the process of ingesting, storing, organizing and maintaining the data created and collected by an organization, as explained in this in-depth look at the process.