Q.Categorise the following data as structured, semi-structured and unstructured:
• Newspaper
• Cricket Match Score
• HTML Page
• Patient records in a hospital

Data Classification Types

Data comes from many sources, and its format depends entirely on where it originates. An image is a grid of pixels, a video is a sequence of frames, a fee slip mixes numbers and text, and a chat message can contain text, emojis, and media. Because of this variety, data is classified into two broad categories based on its format: structured and unstructured.

Structured Data — The Organised Kind

Data that is organised and can be recorded in a well-defined format is called structured data. It is typically stored in a computer in a tabular form — that is, in rows and columns.

• Each column represents a particular parameter, also called an attribute, characteristic, or variable.
• Each row represents a single observation — the data for one entity across all attributes.

For example, consider the inventory of kitchen items in a shop. The data can be arranged in a table where columns are Model Number, Product Name, Unit Price, Discount (%), and Items in Inventory. Each row gives the details for one product.

Other everyday examples of structured data:

Because structured data follows a known, fixed schema, it can be stored directly in database tables and queried with SQL — this is exactly what makes the rest of this chapter (and the whole database unit) possible.

Unstructured Data — No Fixed Shape

Not all data fits neatly into rows and columns. Data that does not have a traditional row-and-column structure is called unstructured data.

Consider a newspaper. It contains news items, images, and advertisements, but there is no fixed pattern for how these are arranged — one day a page might have three images and five articles, another day one large image and three text articles. An email is the same: there's no fixed rule for how many lines, paragraphs, or attachments it must contain.

Common examples of unstructured data:

• Web pages (mixing text, images, graphics, audio, and video)
• Text documents and business reports
• Books
• Audio and video files
• Social media messages

Metadata: Data about Unstructured Data

Unstructured data is sometimes described using metadata — literally "data about data." Metadata gives a structured way to describe an unstructured item, even though the item itself has no fixed structure. …