Big data is high-volume, high-velocity, and high-variety information asset that demands cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making.
Big data is often stored in a data lake. While data warehouses are commonly built on relational databases and contain structured data only, data lakes can support various data types and typically are based on Hadoop clusters, cloud object storage services, NoSQL databases or other big data platforms.
There are three main data processing methods – manual, mechanical and electronic.
