2.2 Characteristics of Data
To appreciate the importance of data as a corporate resource, we need to examine its characteristics more closely.
2.2.1 Data and Information
We often think of data as information, but these two terms have slightly different meanings. The term data refers to the bare facts recorded in the database. Information is processed data that is in a form that is useful for making decisions. Information is derived from the stored data by rearranging, selecting, combining, analyzing, visualizing, summarizing, or performing other operations on the data. For example, if we simply print out all the stored items in the database shown in Figure 1.1, without the column headings that identify what they represent, we have data. However, ...
Get Databases Illuminated, 4th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
