Looking Closer at Data

August 1, 2014 / Melody Smith / Comments Off on Looking Closer at Data

Not all data is the same. We know this to be true. Sometimes there is just more to meet the eye, even if it is simple differences. For example, there is structured data and unstructured data. Unstructured data is just that – data laid out on a slab where there is just data and only data. And then there is structured data. When we lay structured data under the microscope and we start to examine it, what do we find? We find that in addition to data, there is some stuff called metadata that is tightly interwoven into our structured data. This interesting topic came from BeyeNetwork in their article, “Data, Metadata and Big Data.”

Metadata looks like attributes. In structured data, when we stumble across a name, there is metadata (or an attribute) that tells us what we have. Attribution (or metadata) allows us to do sophisticated processing/analysis against structured data.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.

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Melody Smith

Melody K. Smith has provided organizational, social media and digital communication services to a large non-profit for the past twenty years. Prior to that she championed employee engagement and communications in the healthcare field. She holds a Bachelors degree in Marketing. When not wrangling and writing TaxoDiary content for your reading pleasure, Melody writes fiction, rescues dogs and throws legendary dinner parties.