Categories of Data

2024-04-30

Word count: 288 | Reading time≈ 1 min

Background

Certain type of data created as part of normal business activities might be used enterprise wide, whilst others may only be useful locally within a department or geographic region. The data maybe structured, for example an order held in the SAP system, or unstructured such as design document. The data can also differ from a retention and usage and perspective. Taking this into account different categories of data exist that have different management requirements.

Categories

Data Type	Description
Analytical Data	Created by transforming operational, unstructured, master and reference data to address specific decision support or reporting requirements.
Operational Data	Generated from business activities and is given context by Master data and reference data, for example purchase orders, or sales orders. It is subdivided into structured and unstructured data.
Enterprise Structure Data	Represents the key structures of the enterprise and is particularly used for reporting business activity by responsibility. Examples are Chart of Accounts and organisational structures. Changes to enterprise structure data can have a high impact of historical reporting.
Master Data	Refers to the core business data entities such as customer, product, vendor or parts. It is used to provide context to operational data, for example the master data related to a Purchase Order would be the supplier, the goods or service types being supplied and the employee who raised the order.
Reference Data	Any kind of data that is only used to categorise other data in a database and normally values have to confirm to one of several allowed values. For eample the classification of an employee may be hourly paid, salaries or agency
Metadata	The information used to describe the characteristics of a piece of corporate data, for example the meaning, format, and security classification.