Data Strategy

Chapter 11. Strategies for Managing Unstructured Data

	“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.”
	--Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson

Any discussion about organizational data strategies is incomplete without formulating a tactic for maintaining unstructured data. Unstructured data (UD) focuses on data types that cannot be normalized and stored in a typical relational, network, or hierarchical database, but should nonetheless be organized, categorized, stored, retained, archived, deleted, searched, and delivered. We all work with this type of data on a daily basis: emails, documents, spreadsheets, reports, pictures, audio files, video files, and general ...