“Why did the data scientist break up with her boyfriend?”
“Because he couldn’t ‘model’ a good relationship”
What is data?
Data is a collection of raw facts, figures and statistics, that when organized and analyzed, can provide valuable insights into various situations. Data takes many various forms including texts, images, numbers, audio and video. The goal of data is to provide useful information that can be used to support decision making, research and analysis, and drive business processes across a wide range of industries.
Data is classified into:
Structured data – this category of data is organized and formatted in a specific way making it easy for computers to process and analyze. Examples include tables in a database, spreadsheet data and structured data in a well-defined format.
Unstructured data – this category of data has no specific format and can include images, videos, audio recordings and natural language text. It is more difficult for computers to process and analyze, as it requires specialized algorithms and techniques to extract useful/meaningful information.
Data is a crucial component of modern businesses and organizations as it provides a foundation for informed decision making, improved operations and enhanced customer experiences. By collecting, storing and analyzing data, organizations can gain valuable insights into their operations, customers and markets, allowing them to make data-driven decisions and drive their businesses forward.
An introduction to databases:
A database is an organized collection of data that is stored in a way that allows for efficient retrieval and manipulation of the data. Databases are commonly used to store large amounts of information in a variety of format that includes texts, numbers, dates and binary data (one of the two conceptually opposed values, for example, ‘true/false’). It can be accessed or stored in a computer system..
The commonly used types of databases include:
• Relational database – this is the most common type of database and are based on the relational model. Data is stored in tables with rows and columns, and use a set of relationships between tables to manage the data. The concept of ‘keys’ is used to link tables. For example, the primary key, foreign key and composite key.
• NoSQL database – this type of database is designed for storing and retrieving large amounts of unstructured or semi-structured data for example images and texts, and do not use the traditional table-based relational model. Instead, they use various data models including documents, graphs and key-value to store and retrieve data.
• Cloud database - this is a database that typically runs on a cloud computing platform. Database service provides access to the database. Database services make the underlying software-stack transparent to the user.
There are more categories of databases but we shall leave it at that, as this blog explores a short introduction to databases.
Databases are managed using Database Management Software (DBMS) which are software programs that allow for the creation, maintenance and interaction with databases. Examples of DBMS include MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB, just to mention a few.