What is Big Data and How does it work?

What is Data:

  Data are basic values or facts .Computers use many different types of data stored in digital format , such as text numbers and multimedia.

What is big data:

  Big Data basically refers to huge volume of data that cannot be stored and processed using the traditional approach within the given time frame. 

The next big question that comes to your mind is how huge this data should should be in order to be classified as big data. There is a lot of misconception while referring the term Big Data. We usually use the Big Data to refer to the data that is either in GigaByte or TeraByte or PetaBytes or ExaBytes or anything that is larger than this size. 

This does not defines the term big data completely even a small amount of data can be referred to as big data depending on the context it is being used.

let me take an 2 examples and try to explain it to you and then explain it usage of big data in 2 real world examples.

Example 1:

For instance if we try to attach a document that is of 100 MB in size to an email. We would not be able to do as the email system would not support an attachment of this size therefore this 100 mb of attachment with respect to email can be referred to as big data.

Example 2:

Let us say we have around 10 TB of image files upon which certain processing needs to be done. For   instance we may want to resize and enhance these images within a given time frame suppose. 

If we make use of the traditional system to perform this task we would not be able to accomplish this task within the given time frame as the computing resources of the traditional system would not be efficient to accomplish this task on time .Therefore this 10 tb of image files can be referred to as big data.

Now let us try understand big data using some real world examples.

Example1:

I believe you all might aware of some of the popular social networking sites such as facebook, twitter, linkedin ,google + and youtube.

Each of this site receive huge volume of data on a daily basis. It has been reported on some of the popular tech blocks that facebook receives around 100 terabytes of data each day.

Twitter process around 400 M tweets each day as far as linkedin and google + are concerned each of their site receives tens of tb of data on daily basis and finally coming to youtube it has been reported that each time around 48 hours of flash videos are uploaded to youtube .

You can just imagine how much volume of data is being stored and processed on these sites but as the number of users keep growing on these sites storing and processing this data becomes a challenging task .Since data holds a lot of valuable information this data needs to be processed in a short span of time by using this valuable information.

Companies can boost their sales and generate more revenue by making use of the traditional computing system . We would not be able to accomplish this task within the given time frame as the computing resources of the traditional computing system would not be sufficient for processing and storing such a huge volume of data this where hadoop comes into picture . Therefore we can term this huge volume of data as big data.

Example2:

Let me take another real world example related to airline industry and try to explain the term big data .For instance the aircrafts while they are flying they keep transmitting data to the air traffic control located at the airports .The air traffic control uses this data to track and monitor the status and progress.

 If the flight on real time basis since multiple aircrafts would be transmitting this data simultaneously a huge volume of data gets accumulated at the air traffic control within a short span of time. Therefore it becomes a challenging task to manage and process this huge volume of data using the traditional approach. Hence we can turn this huge volume of data as big data

I hope you all might understood what is big data!!! Upcoming blogs we will see characterization of Big data and tools for Big data!!!!!!Thanks for your support!!!