Tag: Big Data
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What is Big Data Creativity and How Do You Get It?
In a recent Smart Data Collective post, Bernard Marr cites creativity as a top big data skill, but what is creativity? His point is, since big data applications are often off the beaten IT path, big data professionals must solve “problems that companies don’t even know they have – as their insights highlight bottlenecks or inefficiencies in…
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A Field Guide to Overloaded Data
At the very first TDWI Conference, Duane Hufford described a phenomenon he called “embedded data”, now more commonly called “overloaded data”, where two or more concepts are stuffed into a single data field (“Metadata Repositories,” TDWI Conference 1995). He described and portrayed in graphics three types of overloaded data. Almost 20 years later, overloaded data…
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Three things about “Interview with a Data Scientist”
Recently, I posted “Interview with a Data Scientist” at my company’s blog site. In it, my friend and colleague Yan Li answers four questions about being a data scientist and what it takes to become one. In my view Yan’s responses provide a bracing reminder that data science is something truly new, but that it rests on…
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To SQL or to NoSQL?
Recently there was a great post at Dzone recounting how one “tech savvy startup” moved away from its NoSQL database management system to a relational one. The writer, Matt Butcher, plays out the reasons under these main points: Our data is relational We need better querying We have access to better resources Summing up: “The bottom…
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A New Framework for Data Management?
I hold a strong prejudice that IT paradigms are useful for about 30 years. The PC was dominant from 1980 to 2010, “online” mainframe systems from 1970 to 2000, and so on. If that’s the case then time’s up for Bill Inmon’s data warehousing framework. So far no widely held pattern has emerged to help…
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Relational DB Pros: The Times They Are A-Changin’
Recently I read a thoughtful post at the PASS Business Analytics Conference site discussing how different the world is now for database professionals. Author Chris Webb focuses on the data science side in this post. His analysis made me think of the challenges and opportunities “big data” serves up to relational database designers. To me these…
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Skills of the Data Architect
One common theme in recent tectonic shifts in information technology is data management. Analyzing customer responses may require combing through unstructured emails and tweets. Timely analysis of web interactions may demand a big data solution. Deployment of data visualization tools to users may dictate redesign of warehouses and marts. The data architect is a key…
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Big Data opportunities and NoSQL challenges
As a relational database professional I couldn’t help but feel like something would be lost with the emergence of the new Big Data/NoSQL database management systems (DBMS). After about two years of buzz around the topic, I’m really excited about the emerging possibilities. However, I’m pretty sure we’ll miss the relational model’s strengths in requirements…
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Special considerations in health care data
I’ve worked with health care data for the past few years, and in a recent conversation I realized it might be valuable to detail some of the complexities of health care data for those who might enter this growing field. Of course these considerations aren’t unique to health care, but they are typical of the…