BI Glossary
Big Data

What is Big Data?
Data is considered ‘big’ when it exceeds your operational database capacity. The four main characteristics of big data are:
Volume, or size of data (e.g., stock trading data for a year)
Velocity, or how quickly data arrives (worldwide customer purchasing data over time)
Variety, or forms the data takes (e.g., user account info, product specifications, etc.).
Veracity, or the uncertainty of data (e.g., reviews from real people v. bots).
The four V’s will help determine when to migrate from regular data to big data solutions.
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