Member-only story
Structured vs Unstructured vs Semi-Structured Data
Understanding the difference between structured, semi-structured and unstructured data

Introduction
It is estimated that more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data were generated only in 2021 while more than 79 zettabytes of data were consumed (source: Statista) while these numbers are growing exponentially every year. But one question you may have is what do we really mean when referring to the term data?
Data comes in different types; from spreadsheets, to text and video or even audio files. In today’s article we will discuss about the main differences between structured, unstructured and semi-structured data and give some real-world examples. Additionally, we will discuss about where each data type is supposed to be stored within the organisation in order to establish and maintain a proper data management strategy.
Structured Data
Structured data is a type of data that is expected to have some predefined sort of structure prior to being stored to storage means. This structure is often referred to as a schema-on-write.
This type of data can either be human or machine generated. The simplest example of structured data is a spreadsheet created by an analyst…