What is Big Data?

Big data is a general term used to describe the exponential growth and the availability of structured and unstructured data. At present big data is very important to business and society. Because day by day data are becoming massive. It is really difficult to handle with the existing database management system. So need alternate way. This article describes the basic overview of Big Data. Summary of the article:

• What is Big Data?
• Example of Big Data
• Is Big Data a Volume or a Technology?
• Big Data Software

What is Big Data?
Big data is a is a blanket term or buzzword, used to describe a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is so large and difficult to process using traditional database management tools and software techniques. It is one of the biggest new ideas in computing. It is a revolutionizing commerce in the 21st century.

Any data that exceeds our current processing capability can be regarded as big data. Big data are distributed data. Because, the data is so massive that can’t be stored or processed by a single node. The commodity hardware’s are required to handle big data.

Big Data is a concept or term that describes large volumes, high velocity and high variety of information that require advanced technologies and techniques to enable the capture, storage, distribution, management, and analysis of the information. It describes the problems that are arising due to these massive data and how to handle them.

Characteristics of Big Data
The characteristics of properties of big data can be described in terms of three Vs (volume, velocity, variety). This are called the 3Vs in big data. Sometimes we consider another two dimensions (Variability, Complexity) to think about big data. The Vs are given bellow:

• Volume
  In big data the quantity of data or size of data is a very important part. It determines whether it can be considered as Big Data or not.
• Velocity
  It defines the speed of generation of data. How fast the data is being generated, updated, and processed to meet the demands and the challenges.
• Variety
  It defines the different sources and types of data. It could be anything like: structured, unstructured, and semi-structured. Today data are coming from the multiple sources or devices and their formats are different (photos, videos, audio, emails, PDF, etc). This variety of unstructured data creates problems for storing, analyzing.
• Variability
  The velocity and variety of data is now increasing. For this reason, data flows can be highly inconsistent. These conditions are challenging to manage.
• Complexity
  Data management can become a very complex process. Because, today data are comes from numerous sources. It is necessary to connect and build relationships between all the data.

Example of Big Data
As an example of big data we may consider petabytes (1,024 terabytes) or exabytes (1,024 petabytes) of data containing billions to trillions of records of millions of people.

Is Big Data a Volume or a Technology?
Generally the term Big Data may seem the volume of data. But it is not always like that. The term big data (especially when used by vendors) may refer to the technology (tools and processes) that an organization requires to handle the large amounts of data and storage facilities.

Big Data Software
In order to handle massive data some techniques and technologies are used.  Currently following software’s are used in big data technology:

• MongoDB
• Hadoop
• Aster
• Datameer
• FICO Blaze Advisor
• HP Vertica
• Platfora
• Spark
• Splunk
• Tableau
• SAP HANA

That’s all about big data.