Data

10 Data terms explained simply, ordered from basic to advanced. Start at the top if the topic is new to you.

Basic

A plain text file that holds a table: one row per line, commas between values.

An organized store of data that programs can search and update safely.

The language you use to ask a database questions.

Run SQL directly on files sitting in S3, with no database to set up.

Cheap storage where all your data is kept as raw files, to be sorted out later.

A database built for analysis: years of history, from many sources, in one place.

A sorted shortcut that lets a database find rows without reading the whole table.

Copy data out of its sources, clean it up, load it where it can be analyzed.

Processing data as a continuous flow of events, seconds after they happen.

A file format that stores tables by column, compressed, so analytics reads far less.