Big Data: Searching Large Amounts of Data Quickly and Efficiently

[tamim_saif]

Mar. 1, 2013 — Not only scientific institutes but also companies harvest an amazing amount of data. Traditional database management systems are often unable to cope with this. Suitable tools are lacking in information retrieval on big data. Computer scientists from Saarbrücken have developed an approach which enables searching large amounts of data in a fast and efficient way.

The term "big data" is defined as a huge amount of digital information, so big and so complex that normal database technology cannot process it. It is not only scientific institutes like the nuclear research center CERN that often store huge amounts of data ("Big Data"). Companies like Google and Facebook do this as well, and analyze it to make better strategic decisions for their business. How successful such an attempt can be was shown in a New York Times article published last year. It reported on the US-based company "Target" which, by analyzing the buying patterns of a young woman, knew about her pregnancy before her father did.

[SOURCE: INTERNET]