Data Technologies Definitions

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    3-2-1 backup strategy explained: Is it effective?

    The 3-2-1 backup strategy is a time-tested data protection and recovery methodology for ensuring that data is protected adequately and up-to-date backup copies of the data are available when needed.

  • 5V's of big data

    The 5 V's of big data -- velocity, volume, value, variety and veracity -- are the five main and innate characteristics of big data.

  • A

    ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability)

    In transaction processing, ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability) is an acronym and mnemonic device used to refer to the four essential properties a transaction should possess to ensure the integrity and reliability of the data involved in the transaction.

  • advanced analytics

    Advanced analytics is a broad category of inquiry that can be used to help drive changes and improvements in business practices.

  • Apache Hadoop YARN

    Apache Hadoop YARN is the resource management and job scheduling technology in the open source Hadoop distributed processing framework.

  • asset turnover ratio

    The asset turnover ratio is a measurement that shows how efficiently a company is using its owned resources to generate revenue or sales.

  • association rules

    Association rules are if-then statements that show the probability of relationships between data items within large data sets in various types of databases.

  • asynchronous replication

    Asynchronous replication is a store-and-forward approach to data backup and protection.

  • Azure Data Studio (formerly SQL Operations Studio)

    Azure Data Studio is a Microsoft tool, originally named SQL Operations Studio, for managing SQL Server databases and cloud-based Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse systems.

  • What is ad hoc analysis?

    Ad hoc analysis is a business intelligence (BI) process designed to answer a specific business question by using company data from various sources.

  • What is an air gap backup? Strategy, benefits and use cases

    An air gap backup, or an air-gapped backup, is an optional data backup practice used to isolate backup storage from the principal network, such as a business local area network or wide area network, protecting sensitive business data from unauthorized access, tampering or other malicious acts, including malware attacks.

  • What is an analytics database (analytical database)?

    An analytics database, also called an analytical database, is a read-only system that stores historical data on business metrics such as sales performance and inventory levels.

  • What is Apache Flink?

    Apache Flink is a distributed data processing platform for use in big data applications, primarily involving analysis of data stored in Hadoop clusters.

  • What is Apache Spark?

    Apache Spark is an open source parallel processing framework for running large-scale data analytics applications across clustered computers.

  • What is Azure SQL Data Warehouse?

    Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a managed Data Warehouse-as-a Service (DWaaS) offering provided by Microsoft Azure.

  • B

    backup as a service (BaaS)

    Backup as a service (BaaS) is an approach to backing up data that involves purchasing backup and recovery services from an online data backup provider.

  • big data

    Big data is a combination of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data that organizations collect, analyze and mine for information and insights.

  • big data engineer

    A big data engineer is an information technology (IT) professional who is responsible for designing, building, testing and maintaining complex data processing systems that work with large data sets.

  • big data management

    Big data management is the organization, administration and governance of large volumes of both structured and unstructured data.

  • business analytics

    Business analytics (BA) is a set of disciplines and technologies for solving business problems using data analysis, statistical models and other quantitative methods.

  • business continuity

    Business continuity is an organization's ability to maintain critical business functions during and after a disaster has occurred.

  • What is a backup storage device?

    A backup storage device is a hardware component that stores duplicate copies of data.

  • What is a business continuity plan (BCP)?

    A business continuity plan (BCP) is a document that consists of the critical information an organization needs to continue operating during an unplanned event.

  • What is a business continuity plan audit and how do you create one?

    A business continuity plan audit is a formalized method for evaluating how business continuity processes are being managed.

  • What is a business continuity policy?

    A business continuity policy is the set of standards and guidelines an organization enforces to ensure resilience and proper risk management.

  • What is a business intelligence dashboard (BI dashboard)?

    A business intelligence dashboard, or BI dashboard, is a data visualization and analysis tool that displays on one screen the status of key performance indicators (KPIs) and other important business metrics and data points for an organization, department, team or process.

  • What is BCDR? Business continuity and disaster recovery guide

    Business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) are closely related practices that support an organization's ability to remain operational after an adverse event.

  • What is big data analytics?

    Big data analytics is the process of examining big data to uncover information -- such as hidden patterns, correlations, market trends and customer preferences -- that can help organizations make informed business decisions.

  • What is business continuity software?

    Business continuity software is an application or suite designed to make business continuity planning/business continuity management (BCP/BCM) processes, metrics and compliance more efficient and accurate.

  • What is business intelligence (BI)? A detailed guide

    Business intelligence, or BI, is a technology-driven data analysis process that helps an organization's executives, managers and workers make informed business decisions.

  • What is business intelligence architecture (BI architecture)?

    A business intelligence architecture is a framework for the various technologies an organization deploys to run business intelligence and analytics applications.

  • C

    C++

    C++ is an object-oriented programming (OOP) language that is viewed by many as the best language for creating large-scale applications. C++ is a superset of the C language.

  • call tree

    A call tree is a layered hierarchical communication model used to notify specific individuals of an event and coordinate recovery if necessary.

  • citizen data scientist

    A citizen data scientist is an individual who does some data science work for an organization but doesn't hold the title of data scientist or have a formal background in advanced analytics, statistics or related disciplines.

  • cloud disaster recovery (cloud DR)

    Cloud disaster recovery (cloud DR) is a combination of strategies and services intended to back up data, applications and other resources to public cloud or dedicated service providers.

  • Cloud-to-Cloud Backup (C2C Backup)

    C2C backup (cloud-to-cloud backup) is the practice of copying data stored on one cloud service to another cloud service. The backup stored on the second cloud service serves the same purpose as an off-site backup.

  • columnar database

    A columnar database (column-oriented) is a database management system (DBMS) that stores data on disk in columns instead of rows.

  • compliance

    Compliance is the state of being in accordance with established guidelines or specifications, or the process of becoming so.

  • conformed dimension

    In data warehousing, a conformed dimension is a dimension that has the same meaning to every fact with which it relates.

  • consumer privacy (customer privacy)

    Consumer privacy, also known as customer privacy, involves the handling and protection of the sensitive personal information provided by customers in the course of everyday transactions.

  • crisis management plan (CMP)

    A crisis management plan (CMP) outlines how an organization should respond to a critical situation that if left unaddressed, could negatively affect its profitability, reputation or ability to operate.

  • customer analytics (customer data analytics)

    Customer analytics, also called customer data analytics, is the systematic examination of a company's customer information and behavior to identify, attract and retain the most profitable customers.

  • What is change control?

    Change control is a systematic approach that includes the various steps needed to process changes made to a product or system.

  • What is cloud backup and how does it work?

    Cloud backup, also known as online backup or remote backup, is a strategy for sending a copy of a physical or virtual file or database to a secondary, off-site location for preservation in case of equipment failure, site catastrophe or human malfeasance.

  • What is cloud-native backup and recovery?

    Cloud-native backup and recovery protects valuable business content, such as data, applications and systems, through services supplied and supported by a cloud provider.

  • What is composable analytics?

    Composable analytics is an approach to data analytics and business intelligence (BI) that lets an organization combine modular components from different data and analytics tools.

  • What is continuous intelligence?

    Continuous intelligence (CI) is a data analysis process that delivers real-time analytics and insights as a part of ongoing business operations.

  • What is corporate performance management (CPM)?

    Corporate performance management (CPM) encompasses the processes and methodologies used to align an organization's strategies and goals to its plans and actions as a business.

  • What is crisis communication?

    Crisis communication is a strategic approach to corresponding with people and organizations during a disruptive event.

  • What is customer data integration (CDI)?

    Customer data integration (CDI) is the process of defining, consolidating and managing customer information across an organization's business units and systems to achieve a "single version of the truth" for customer data.

  • D

    data anonymization

    Data anonymization describes various techniques to remove or block data containing personally identifiable information (PII).

  • 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.

  • data classification

    Data classification is the process of organizing data into categories that make it easy to retrieve, sort and store for future use.

  • data de-identification

    Data de-identification is decoupling or masking data, to prevent certain data elements from being associated with the individual.

  • 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.

  • data engineer

    A data engineer is an IT professional whose primary job is to prepare data for analytical or operational uses.

  • data exploration

    Data exploration is the first step in data analysis involving the use of data visualization tools and statistical techniques to uncover data set characteristics and initial patterns.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • data loss

    Data loss is the intentional or unintentional destruction of information.

  • data mesh

    Data mesh is a decentralized data management architecture for analytics and data science.

  • data minimization

    Data minimization aims to reduce the amount of collected data to only include necessary information for a specific purpose.

  • data mining

    Data mining is the process of sorting through large data sets to identify patterns and relationships that can help solve business problems through data analysis.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • data processing

    Data processing refers to essential operations executed on raw data to transform the information into a useful format or structure that provides valuable insights to a user or organization.

  • Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018)

    The Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018) is a legislative framework in the United Kingdom governing the processing of personal data.

  • data protection as a service (DPaaS)

    Data protection as a service (DPaaS) involves managed services that safeguard an organization's data.

  • data protection authorities

    Data protection authorities (DPAs) are public authorities responsible for enforcing data protection laws and regulations within a specific jurisdiction.

  • data protection management (DPM)

    Data protection management (DPM) is the administration, monitoring and management of backup processes to ensure backup tasks run on schedule and data is securely backed up and recoverable.

  • data reduction

    Data reduction lowers the amount of capacity required to store data.

  • data replication

    Data replication is the process of copying data from one location to another.

  • data sampling

    Data sampling is a statistical analysis technique used to select, manipulate and analyze a representative subset of data points to identify patterns and trends in the larger data set being examined.

  • data structure

    A data structure is a specialized format for organizing, processing, retrieving and storing data.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • database (DB)

    A database is a collection of information that is organized so that it can be easily accessed, managed and updated.

  • database administrator (DBA)

    A database administrator (DBA) is the information technician responsible for directing and performing all activities related to maintaining and securing a successful database environment.

  • database management system (DBMS)

    A database management system (DBMS) is a software system for creating and managing databases.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Db2

    Db2 is a family of database management system (DBMS) products from IBM that serve a number of different operating system (OS) platforms.

  • decision-making process

    A decision-making process is a series of steps one or more individuals take to determine the best option or course of action to address a specific problem or situation.

  • deep analytics

    Deep analytics is the application of sophisticated data processing techniques to yield information from large and typically multi-source data sets comprised of both unstructured and semi-structured data.

  • Dell EMC Avamar

    Dell EMC Avamar is a hardware and software data backup product.

  • differential backup

    A differential backup is a data backup that copies all the files that have changed since the last full backup was performed.

  • Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023

    India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDPA) is a comprehensive privacy and data protection law that recognizes the right of individuals, referred to as "data principals," to protect their personal data during the processing of that data for lawful purposes.

  • dimension

    In data warehousing, a dimension is a collection of reference information that supports a measurable event, such as a customer transaction.

  • dimension table

    In data warehousing, a dimension table is a database table that stores attributes describing the facts in a fact table.

  • disambiguation

    Disambiguation is the process of determining a word's meaning -- or sense -- within its specific context.

  • disaster recovery (DR)

    Disaster recovery (DR) is an organization's ability to respond to and recover from an event that negatively affects business operations.

  • disaster recovery (DR) site

    A disaster recovery (DR) site is a facility an organization can use to recover and restore its technology infrastructure and operations when its primary data center becomes unavailable.

  • disaster recovery (DR) test

    A disaster recovery test is the examination of each step in a disaster recovery plan to ensure that an organization can recover data, restore business critical applications and continue operations after an interruption of services.

  • disaster recovery team

    A disaster recovery team is a group of individuals focused on planning, implementing, maintaining, auditing and testing an organization's business continuity and disaster recovery procedures.

  • Druva

    Druva is a cloud data protection and management software company based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

  • What are data silos and what problems do they cause?

    A data silo is a repository of data that's controlled by one department or business unit and isolated from the rest of an organization, much like grass and grain in a farm silo are closed off from outside elements.

  • What is a data architect?

    A data architect is an IT professional responsible for defining the policies, procedures, models and technologies used in collecting, organizing, storing and accessing company information.

  • What is a data fabric?

    A data fabric is an architecture and software offering a unified collection of data assets, databases and database architectures within an enterprise.