Discussion: Structured and Unstructured Data

Dichotomy of data : Structured and Unstructured?Data

There has been a massive explosion of data consumption globally since the outbreak of COVID-19. Recall the?Corona-era spurred up what we came to know as lockdown. Then most traditional activities moved online. This created a big push in global data consumption.

Now watch the trend of global data?use according to Statista, it has been on a?kind of exponential increase?since 2020. The measurement is in Zettabytes, it is projected that the world will?an increase data usage to the tune of 120 Zettabytes in 2023, from 97 consumed in 2022, and so on. Now the picture is?obvious. There is a gap.

Like you might have imagined, what constitute the larger chunk of this data are?photos, videos, posts, music and whatnot generated and circulated via the internet. The internet www framework?currently?operate at web 2.0, mostly?applauded for of its interactivity. It enables social media interaction.?The implication of this for?the information technology is a significant push in the use and circulation of information, more especially with?the mediating effect of Covid-19. The important thing to note most of this data is unstructured. This brings the question of structured and unstructured data.

What is structured and unstructured data?

Structured data is?form of data?that is already arranged, ready for analysis. Such forms of data are easily collectible. Such forms of data could exist in databases, records?etc.. While unstructured data is unarranged?and fluid. They are forms of data?that?are in raw forms such as photos, videos' on YouTube, posts....

Your Headache as a Data Analyst:

Your problem as a data is not majorly centered on structured data but on unstructured data. Why? Structured data already has well-established mechanisms of analysis. There are tools such as spreadsheets, Databases, programming languages, etc available for you to analyze your structured data.

Nevertheless, there are few BA(Business Analytics) solutions targeted against turning unstructured data into actionable insights. But most of these are not accessible to small firms. According to Whitlock(2018), the challenges associated with BA solutions for unstructured data surpass its usefulness. The challenges include lack of sufficient talents, finance, security and so on.

It is confirmed that about 70% of global consumption exists as unstructured data.

....to be continued.