Data Technologies Definitions

Search Definitions
  • D

    What is a data flow diagram (DFD)?

    A data flow diagram (DFD) is a graphical or visual representation that uses a standardized set of symbols and notations to describe a business's operations through data movement.

  • What is a 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.

  • What is a data mart (datamart)?

    A data mart is a repository of data that is designed to serve a particular community of knowledge workers.

  • What is a disaster recovery plan (DRP)?

    A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a documented, structured approach that describes how an organization can quickly resume operations after an unplanned incident.

  • What is a distributed database?

    A distributed database is a database that consists of two or more files located in different sites on the same or different networks.

  • What is dark data?

    Dark data is digital information an organization collects, processes and stores that is not currently being used for business purposes.

  • What is 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.

  • What is data aggregation?

    Data aggregation is any process whereby data is gathered and expressed in a summary form.

  • What is data analytics (DA)?

    Data analytics (DA) is the process of examining data sets to find trends and draw conclusions about the information they contain.

  • 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 IT systems and provides a blueprint for managing data, as this guide explains.

  • What is 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.

  • What is data automation?

    Data automation is the use of software tools and infrastructure to streamline data management tasks. Data automation techniques intentionally limit human interaction with data-related jobs.

  • What is 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.

  • What is data curation?

    Data curation is the process of creating, organizing and maintaining data sets so people looking for information can access and use them.

  • What is data egress? How it works and how to manage costs

    Data egress is when data leaves a closed or private network and is transferred to an external location.

  • 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.

  • What is data management and why is it important? Full guide

    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 guide.

  • What is 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.

  • What is data orchestration?

    Data orchestration is the process of automating, coordinating and organizing the movement of data across an enterprise through business intelligence (BI) and other analytical tools.

  • What is data preparation? An in-depth guide

    Data preparation is the process of gathering, combining, structuring and organizing data for use in business intelligence, analytics and data science applications, as explained in this guide.

  • What is data preprocessing? Key steps and techniques

    Data preprocessing, a component of data preparation, describes any type of processing performed on raw data to prepare it for another data processing procedure.

  • What is data profiling?

    Data profiling refers to the process of examining, analyzing, reviewing and summarizing data sets to gain insight into the quality of data.

  • What is data protection and why is it important?

    Data protection is the process of safeguarding data and restoring important information in the event the data is corrupted, compromised or lost due to cyberattacks, shutdowns, intentional harm or human error.

  • What is data quality and why is it important?

    Data quality measures a data set's condition based on factors such as accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, uniqueness and validity.

  • What is data recovery?

    Data recovery is the process of restoring data that has been lost, accidentally deleted, corrupted or made inaccessible.

  • What is data restoration?

    Data restoration is the process of copying backup data from secondary storage and restoring it to its original location or a new location.

  • What is data science as a service (DSaaS)?

    Data science as a service (DSaaS) is a form of outsourcing that involves the delivery of information gleaned from advanced analytics applications run by data scientists at an outside company to corporate clients for their business use.

  • What is data stewardship?

    Data stewardship is the management and oversight of an organization's data assets, which helps provide business users with high-quality, easily accessible and consistent data.

  • What is data transformation? Definition, types and benefits

    Data transformation is the process of converting data from one format -- such as a database file, Extensible Markup Language (XML) document or Excel spreadsheet -- into another format.

  • What is data validation?

    Data validation is the practice of checking the integrity, accuracy and structure of data before it is used for or by one or more business operations.

  • What is data visualization?

    Data visualization translates information into charts, maps or other graphics to show patterns, trends and outliers in a way that can be grasped quickly.

  • What is data?

    In computing, data is information translated into a form that is efficient for movement or processing.

  • What is 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.

  • What is 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.

  • What is days sales outstanding (DSO)?

    Days sales outstanding (DSO) measures the average time it takes a business to collect payments after a sale.

  • What is decision intelligence?

    Decision intelligence is an emerging field that combines data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and decision theory to improve organizational decision-making.

  • What is denormalization and how does it work?

    Denormalization is the process of adding precomputed redundant data to an otherwise normalized relational database to improve read performance.

  • What is 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.

  • What is digital resilience? Definition, strategy and use cases

    Digital resilience is an organization's ability to manage risks and disruptions to its infrastructure, services and applications, regaining full functionality as quickly as possible while also learning from the experience.

  • What is disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS)?

    Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) is a managed IT service that allows an organization to replicate some of its IT assets off-site in a data center that is owned and managed by a cloud service provider (CSP).

  • E

    edge analytics

    Edge analytics is an approach to data collection and analysis in which an automated analytical computation is performed on data at a sensor, network switch or other device instead of waiting for the data to be sent back to a centralized data store.

  • emergency communications plan (EC plan)

    An emergency communications plan (EC plan) is a document that provides guidelines, contact information and procedures for how information should be shared during all phases of an unexpected occurrence that requires immediate action.

  • encryption key management

    Encryption key management is the practice of generating, organizing, protecting, storing, backing up and distributing encryption keys.

  • ensemble modeling

    Ensemble modeling is the process of running two or more related but different analytical models and then synthesizing the results into a single score or spread.

  • What is an emergency notification system?

    An emergency notification system is an automated approach to crisis communications that contacts people within an organization and distributes important information during a disruption.

  • What is an entity relationship diagram (ERD)?

    An entity relationship diagram (ERD), also known as an entity relationship model, is a graphical representation that depicts relationships among people, objects, places, concepts or events in an information technology (IT) system.

  • What is embedded analytics?

    Embedded analytics is a data analysis technology that puts analytics capabilities within a business software application, platform or web portal instead of a separate tool.

  • What is Extract, Load, Transform (ELT)?

    Extract, Load, Transform (ELT) is a data integration process for transferring raw data from a source server to a data system (such as a data warehouse or data lake) on a target server and then preparing the information for downstream uses.

  • F

    fact table

    In data warehousing, a fact table is a database table in a dimensional model. The fact table stores quantitative information for analysis.

  • fault tolerance

    Fault tolerance is the capability of a system to deliver uninterrupted service despite one or more of its components failing.

  • field

    A field is an area in a fixed or known location in a unit of data such as a record, message header, or computer instruction that has a purpose and usually a fixed size.

  • flat file

    A flat file is a collection of data stored in a two-dimensional database in which similar yet discrete strings of information are stored as records in a table.

  • foreign key

    A foreign key is a column or columns of data in one table that refers to the unique data values -- often the primary key data -- in another table.

  • full backup

    A full backup is the process of making at least one additional copy of all data files that an organization wishes to protect in a single backup operation.

  • What is feature engineering?

    Feature engineering is the process that takes raw data and transforms it into features that can be used to create a predictive model using machine learning or statistical modeling, such as deep learning.

  • G

    Google Analytics

    Google Analytics is a web analytics service that provides numerous analytical tools for marketing purposes.

  • Google BigQuery

    Google BigQuery is a cloud-based big data analytics web service for processing very large read-only data sets.

  • Google Bigtable

    Google Bigtable is a distributed, column-oriented data store created by Google Inc. to handle very large amounts of structured data associated with the company's Internet search and Web services operations.

  • H

    Hadoop

    Hadoop is an open source distributed processing framework that manages data processing and storage for big data applications in scalable clusters of computer servers.

  • Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS)

    The Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is the primary data storage system Hadoop applications use.

  • hashing

    Hashing is the process of transforming any given key or a string of characters into another value.

  • heat map (heatmap)

    A heat map is a two-dimensional representation of data in which various values are represented by colors.

  • hybrid backup

    A hybrid backup is typically when organizations use both on-premises storage and the public cloud as data backup destinations, depending on specific requirements and use cases.

  • I

    in-database analytics

    In-database analytics is a scheme for processing data within the database, avoiding the data movement that slows response time.  

  • in-memory analytics

    In-memory analytics is an approach to querying data residing in a computer's random access memory (RAM) as opposed to querying data stored on physical drives.

  • ISO 22301 (International Organization of Standardization standard 22301)

    International Organization of Standardization standard 22301 (ISO 22301) is a proposed standard that would call for meeting specific societal security requirements for disaster preparedness and business continuity management systems (BCMS). It is currently in draft form that, if approved, would call for requirements for creating a BCMS, as well as managing and improving that system.

  • ISO/TS 22317 (International Organization for Standardization Technical Standard 22317)

    ISO/TS 22317 is the first formal standard to address the business impact analysis process.

  • What is image-based backup?

    Image-based backup creates a copy of an operating system (OS) and all the data associated with it, including the system state and application configurations.

  • K

    key results indicator (KRI)

    A key result indicator (KRI) is a metric that measures the quantitative results of business actions to help companies track progress and reach organizational goals.

  • What is a key performance indicator (KPI)? Strategy and guide

    Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable business metrics that corporate executives, managers and other stakeholders use to track and analyze factors deemed crucial to meeting the organization's stated objectives.

  • L

    logistic regression

    Logistic regression, also known as a logit model, is a statistical analysis method to predict a binary outcome, such as yes or no, based on prior observations of a data set.

  • M

    Microsoft SQL Server

    Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that supports a wide variety of transaction processing, business intelligence (BI) and data analytics applications in corporate IT environments.

  • Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

    Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is an integrated environment to manage a SQL Server infrastructure.

  • MicroStrategy

    MicroStrategy is an enterprise business intelligence (BI) application and software vendor.

  • MongoDB

    MongoDB is an open source NoSQL database management program.

  • MPP database (massively parallel processing database)

    An MPP database is a database that is optimized to be processed in parallel for many operations to be performed by many processing units at a time.

  • multidimensional database (MDB)

    A multidimensional database (MDB) is a type of database that is optimized for data warehouse and online analytical processing (OLAP) applications.

  • What is a metrics store?

    A metrics store -- also sometimes referred to as a metrics layer, metrics platform or headless business intelligence (BI) -- is a centralized repository for metrics definitions, including the calculations of metrics.

  • What is a multimodel database?

    A multimodel database is a data processing platform that supports multiple data models, which define the parameters for how the information in a database is organized and arranged.

  • What is master data management (MDM)?

    Master data management (MDM) is a process that creates a uniform set of data on customers, products, suppliers and other business entities from different IT systems.

  • What is Microsoft SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services)?

    Microsoft Structured Query Language (SQL) Server Integration Services (SSIS) is an enterprise platform for setting up data integrations and data transformations.

  • What is Microsoft Visual FoxPro (VFP)?

    Microsoft Visual FoxPro (VFP) is an object-oriented programming (OOP) environment with a built-in relational database engine.

  • What is MySQL?

    MySQL is a popular, scalable, user-friendly, open source and free relational database management system (RDBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL) to store, manage, and manipulate data.

  • N

    named entity

    In data mining, a named entity is a phrase that clearly identifies one item from a set of other items that have similar attributes.

  • natural disaster recovery

    Natural disaster recovery is the process of recovering data and resuming business operations following a natural disaster.

  • NetSuite

    NetSuite is a business technology vendor based in San Mateo, California.

  • network disaster recovery plan

    A network disaster recovery plan is a set of procedures designed to prepare an organization to respond to an interruption of network services during a natural or humanmade catastrophe.

  • network load balancing (NLB)

    Network load balancing (NLB) is a feature in multiple versions of the Microsoft Windows Server operating system (OS), Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other cloud service providers that distribute network traffic among multiple servers or virtual machines (VMs) within a cluster to avoid overloading any one host and improve performance.

  • noisy data

    Noisy data is a data set that contains extra meaningless data. Almost all data sets will contain a certain amount of unwanted noise.

  • What is NoSQL (Not Only SQL database)?

    NoSQL is an approach to database management that can accommodate a wide variety of data models, including key-value, document, columnar and graph formats.

  • O

    object-oriented database management system (OODBMS)

    An object-oriented database management system (OODBMS), sometimes shortened to ODBMS for object database management system, is a database management system (DBMS) that supports the modelling and creation of data as objects.

  • OLAP (online analytical processing)

    OLAP (online analytical processing) is a computing method that enables users to easily and selectively extract and query data in order to analyze it from different points of view.

  • OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog)

    An OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) is an online bibliography of a library collection that is available to the public

  • Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)

    Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is an open standard application programming interface (API) that allows application programmers to easily access data stored in a database.

  • operational data store (ODS)

    An operational data store (ODS) is a type of database that's often used as an interim logical area for a data warehouse.

  • operational efficiency

    Operational efficiency refers to an organization's ability to reduce waste of time, effort and material while still producing a high-quality service or product.

  • operational intelligence (OI)

    Operational intelligence (OI) is an approach to data analysis that enables decisions and actions in business operations to be based on real-time data as it's generated or collected by companies.

  • operational resilience

    Operational resilience is a business's ability to respond to and overcome adverse circumstances during operation that might cause financial loss or disrupt business services.

  • Oracle E-Business Suite

    Oracle E-Business Suite is one of Oracle Corporation's major product lines. Oracle E-Business Suite applications run on top of the vendor's flagship Oracle Database software.

  • Oracle RMAN (Oracle Recovery Manager)

    Oracle RMAN (Oracle Recovery Manager) is a utility built into Oracle databases to automate backup and recovery; it includes features not available in third-party backup tools.