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Structured vs. Unstructured Data: An Overview

April 11, 2023

Structured data and unstructured data are both forms of data, but the first uses a single standardized format for storage, and the second does not. Structured data must be appropriately formatted (or reformatted) to provide a standardized data format before being stored, which is not a necessary step when storing unstructured data.

The relational database provides an excellent example of how structured data is used and stored. The data is normally formatted into specific fields (for example, credit card numbers or addresses), allowing the data to be easily found using SQL.

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