Definitions:
- Data Analytics: The process of examining, cleaning, transforming, and modelling data to discover useful information and support decision-making. Data analytics encompasses various techniques and tools that help businesses gain insights from their data, whether it's structured or unstructured. This can involve statistical analysis, data visualisation, and predictive modelling.
- Data Engineering: The design, building, and maintaining of the architecture of big data ecosystems. Data engineers are responsible for creating the infrastructure and tools needed to collect, store, process, and analyse large datasets. This includes tasks such as designing databases, creating data pipelines, and ensuring data quality and security.
- Data Factory: A cloud-based integration service that orchestrates and automates the movement and transformation of data. Data factories enable the creation of data pipelines that can extract data from various sources, transform it as needed, and load it into target data stores. This is often used in ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes.
- Data Governance: The overall management of the availability, usability, integrity, and security of data used in an enterprise. Data governance involves establishing policies, procedures, and standards to ensure that data is accurate, consistent, and accessible. It also includes compliance with legal and regulatory requirements related to data privacy and protection.
- Data Integration: The process of combining data from different sources into a unified view. Data integration involves merging data from various databases, applications, and systems to create a single, cohesive dataset. This can be achieved through techniques such as data warehousing, data lakes, and federated databases.
- Data Lake: A storage repository that holds a vast amount of raw data in its native format until it is needed. Data lakes are designed to store large volumes of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, allowing for flexible and scalable data processing. This is particularly useful for big data analytics and machine learning tasks.
- Data Mart: A subset of a data warehouse that is usually oriented to a specific business line. Data marts are smaller, focused data repositories designed to support the specific needs of a particular department, team, or function within an organisation. They provide a more targeted and accessible data environment for analysis.
- Data Mining: The process of discovering patterns and correlations within large data sets to predict outcomes. Data mining involves using statistical, machine learning, and other analytical techniques to extract meaningful insights from data. This can be applied to various domains, including marketing, finance, and healthcare.
- Data Quality: The condition of data based on factors such as accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, validity, and uniqueness. Ensuring high data quality is crucial for making informed decisions and achieving reliable analytics results. Data quality management involves processes such as data cleansing, data validation, and data profiling.
- Data Science: An interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems to extract knowledge and insights from structured and unstructured data. Data science combines elements of statistics, computer science, and domain expertise to analyse data and develop predictive models.
- Data Visualisation: The graphical representation of data and information. Data visualisation involves creating visuals such as charts, graphs, and maps to present data in a way that is easy to understand and interpret. This is a crucial aspect of data analytics, as it helps to communicate insights and trends effectively.
- Data Warehousing: The process of constructing and using a data warehouse. Data warehousing involves designing, implementing, and maintaining a central repository of integrated data from various sources. Data warehouses are optimised for querying and analysing large volumes of data, supporting business intelligence and decision-making.
- Databricks: A unified analytics platform for data engineering, data science, and machine learning. Databricks provides a collaborative environment for data teams to work on big data projects, leveraging technologies such as Apache Spark. It offers tools for data preparation, machine learning, and real-time analytics.
- Databricks Delta: A storage layer that brings scalability, reliability, and performance to big data workloads. Databricks Delta provides features such as ACID transactions, data versioning, and optimised performance for large-scale data processing. It is designed to handle the complexities of big data and ensure data integrity.
- Databricks MLflow: An open-source platform for managing the end-to-end machine learning lifecycle. Databricks MLflow provides tools for tracking experiments, packaging models, and deploying them to production. It supports various machine learning frameworks and helps streamline the ML workflow.
- Deep Learning: A subset of machine learning based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Deep learning models, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs), are capable of learning complex patterns from large datasets. These models are used in applications such as image recognition, natural language processing, and speech recognition.
- Design Thinking: A human-centred approach to innovation that integrates the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. Design thinking involves empathising with users, defining problems, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing. It encourages a iterative and collaborative process to solve complex problems.
- DevOps: A set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to reduce the system development lifecycle and deliver high-quality software. DevOps aims to improve collaboration between development and operations teams, automate processes, and ensure continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). This helps organisations to deliver software more quickly and reliably.
- Digital Experience (DX): The experience a user has with a digital product or service. Digital experience encompasses all aspects of a user's interaction with digital touchpoints, including websites, mobile apps, and other digital platforms. Enhancing the digital experience involves optimising user interfaces, improving performance, and personalising content.
- Digital Marketing: The use of digital channels to promote or market products and services to consumers and businesses. Digital marketing includes strategies such as search engine optimisation (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, and content marketing. It leverages data and analytics to target audiences, measure performance, and optimise campaigns.
- Digital Response: Strategies and actions taken in response to digital events or interactions. Digital response involves analysing user behaviour, monitoring digital channels, and implementing tactics to engage users and address their needs. This can include personalised messaging, targeted advertising, and real-time customer support.
- Digital Transformation: The use of digital technologies to create new or modify existing business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. Digital transformation involves integrating digital tools and platforms into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how the business operates and delivers value to customers.