Nowadays, it seems like everyone is talking about the term big data. However, a majority of them are not sure what it is and how they will make the most out of it. Apart from a few companies, most of them are still confused about the concept and are not ready to adopt the idea. Even when we hear the term big data, so many questions come to our minds. It is very important to understand these concepts. These questions include:
- What is big data?
- Why is there so much hype about it?
- Does it just mean huge volumes of data or is there something else to it?
- Does big data have any characteristics and what are these?
- Why do we need big data architects and what are the design considerations we have to consider to architect any big data solutions?
In this chapter, we will focus on answering these questions and building a strong foundation toward understanding the world of big data world. Mainly, we will be covering the following topics:
- Big data
- The characteristics of big data
- The different design considerations to big data solutions
- The key terminology used in the world of big data
Let's now start with the first and the most important question: what is big data?
