Word of the Day: data lake

Word of the Day Daily updates on the latest technology terms | March 12, 2019 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. While a hierarchical data warehouse stores data in files or folders, a data lake uses a flat architecture to store data. Each data element in a lake is assigned a unique identifier and tagged with a set of extended metadata tags. When a business question arises, the data lake can be queried for relevant data, and that smaller set of data can then be analyzed to help answer the question. The term data lake is often associated with Hadoop-oriented object storage. In such a scenario, an organization's data is first loaded into the Hadoop platform, and then business analytics and data mining tools are applied to the data where it resides on Hadoop's cluster nodes of commodity computers. Like big data, the term data lake is sometimes disparaged as being simply a marketing label for a product that supports Hadoop. Increasingly, however, the term is being accepted as a way to describe any large data pool in which the schema and data requirements are not defined until the data is queried. Data lake vs. data warehouse Data lakes and data warehouses are both used for storing big data, but each approach has its own uses. Typically, a data warehouse is a relational database housed on an enterprise mainframe server or the cloud. The data stored in a warehouse is extracted from various online transaction processing (OLTP) applications to support business analytics (BA) queries and data marts for specific internal business groups, such as sales or inventory teams.   Data warehouses are useful when there is a massive amount of data from operational systems that needs to be readily available for analysis. Because the data in a lake is often uncurated and can originate from sources outside of the company's operational systems, lakes are not a good fit for the average business analytics user. Quote of the Day "If an organization wants to have high-quality data in its data lake and achieve high-quality results, it needs to engage in proper data lake governance." - Anne Marie Smith Trending Terms Hadoop data lake raw data data warehouse business analytics Microsoft Azure Data Lake enterprise data hub fast data Learning Center Beyond the RDBMS: Data warehouse vs. data lake vs. data mart There are many ways to store big data, but the choice of whether to use a data warehouse vs. data lake vs. data mart vs. operational data store or a traditional relational database comes down to who will use the data and how. Learn the differences here. Data catalog software takes on data lakes, privacy laws Data catalogs are a new age follow on to the data repositories of an earlier computing era. Embedded with machine learning traits, data catalog software is becoming more popular with enterprise users as both data lakes and data privacy requirements expand. Avoid turbulence when shifting to data analytics in the cloud Before devising a migration strategy for BI and data analytics in the cloud, issues like existing analytics processes; software evaluation; data quality, privacy and protection; and seen and unseen costs require a lot more than lip service, as industry experts will tell you. What data lake governance challenges do organizations face? A data lake governance strategy can mean the difference between owning a data lake and a data swamp. Expert Anne Marie Smith explores challenges an organization may face when apply data governance policies to data lakes. Google Cloud data lake fuels cloud payment processing flow A technology leader building a cloud payment processing system on top of a Google Cloud data lake said getting early feedback from users was an important early step in a cloud journey that eventually aims to capitalize on new AI capabilities. Quiz Yourself The use of a spreadsheet when a data warehouse was required created a situation _______ effective analysis was impossible. a. where b. in which Answer Stay in Touch For feedback about any of our definitions or to suggest a new definition, please contact me at: mrouse@techtarget.com Visit the Word of the Day Archives and catch up on what you've missed! FOLLOW US About This E-Newsletter This e-newsletter is published by the TechTarget network. To unsubscribe from Whatis.com, click here. Please note, this will not affect any other subscriptions you have signed up for. TechTarget, Whatis, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466. Contact: webmaster@techtarget.com Copyright 2018 TechTarget. All rights reserved.