Structured Data: Primary Sources and Importance in Data-Information-Knowledge Continuum

Running head: STRUCTURED DATA
STRUCTURED DATA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Date

1STRUCTURED DATA
What is the primary source of structured data?
Ans: The term Structure Data means any data that are inside a particular field of a file or
record. The structured data are generally contained in the spreadsheets and relational
databases. The primary sources of Structured Data are few, in fact, it can be generated only in
two ways. Firstly, it can be generated from machines like sensors, GPSs, RFID tags, network
data, medical devices, weblogs and the devices which involve no direct human interaction.
By, the report of Interactive Data Corporation (IDC) in the year 2025 there will be
approximately 80 billion devices will be connected to the Internet that will be able to
generate and store a massive amount of structured data (Afolayan, White & Mason-Jones,
2016). Secondly, structured data can also be generated directly by humans interacting with
the computers and electronic devices. The examples are data generated from responses to
online surveys, direct human input in excel, MS word or in some other software based on
observations, Online game data and so on. The machine generated structured data are more
accurate and generated within very short time rather than the data human-generated data that
may contain errors or biasness.
Why does the data-information-knowledge continuum depend on structured data?
Explain
Ans: For minimizing the equivocation, a type of information system is used by organizations
that use a database for storing data and metadata (data about data). The Metadata help for
interpreting the data and transforming those into information. Then the information is
analyzed, and some knowledge about the concerned topic is obtained. The obtained
knowledge is then compared with proper justification and previous beliefs. This is known as
the data-information-knowledge continuum. Hence, the unstructured data (data with no
proper title, name or missing values) will be very much difficult to process by the information