Types of Data
Properties
The data can be split into three types based on their structure: structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data (LI in VDBMS).
Structured data is a record that follows a strict format and has a predefined schema (e.g. CSV), this type of data is usually handled by relation databases (NoSQL Distilled).
Semi-structured data, also called self-describing, does not contain a pre-defined scheme, but its values contain information about its structure (e.g. JSON, XML); this type of data is handled by different NoSQL databases such as document, graph and column databases (NoSQL Distilled).
Unstructured data has no schema defined nor information about its structure and is, therefore, difficult to handle (e.g. MP4, AVI, JPEG). This type of data is now often handled by vector databases (LI in VDBMS).
💡It is important to understand your data (its type) and the use case and, based on this, to select the appropriate database (data model)!