My search for clarity on big data began a couple of years ago, and the initial challenges were many. First, as an editor, I often query or delete the word bigin descriptions of technology problems and solutions, because bigas a descriptor in enterprise technology doesn’t usually add much value. (In Oracle Magazine’s coverage of enterprise-class Oracle platforms, frameworks, and tools that manage the ever-growing volumes and types of structured and unstructured data in today’s information explosion, the word big may also be redundant.)
Second, in my initial search for definitions and descriptions of big data, I found what seemed to be different definitions from dif-ferent companies. And although I also found some comfort in editorial content substan-tiating my opinion that the definitions of big data at the time were variable, that same content didn’t help with my understanding of big data as a technology.
Finally, the examples of information included in big data stores and the tech-nologies that used them were as variable as big data’s definitions. And most examples seemed to be presented as new data silos for specific industries, making the applica-tion of an example to another industry a challenging task.
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