Modern organizations need a lot of data(i.e big data). Previously, this data used to only come from a few data sources, now it comes from virtually everywhere. Some of it comes as structured data — in predefined formats and fields, like phone numbers, dates, time stamps or sql tables. But, increasingly, much of it comes as unstructured data, in undefined formats and fields — like images, audio files, or documents.
While storing and analyzing big data is critical, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. In the past, the standard place to keep big data was a data warehouse, but over the past decade, a new approach emerged: Data lakes.
In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about data lakes. You’ll learn:
- What is a data lake?
- How is a data lake different from a data warehouse?
- Benefits of data lake
- Best practices for using data lakes