Can a Data Warehouse Store Unstructured Data?

A data warehouse is a knowledge management solution that stores all the data within an organization in a single location. Data is gathered from multiple sources and processed for storage. Today, data warehouses exist on physical mainframe computers but more commonly on the cloud. Close to 53% of Yellowbrick survey respondents state hybrid or multi-cloud data warehouses are a crucial trend.

Luckily, unstructured data—customer information, financial records, product catalogs—can be stored in a data warehouse after processing.

✶ Want to know more about unstructured data? Discover whether unstructured data can be stored in a database

What Kind of Data Can Be Stored in a Data Warehouse?

As a comprehensive repository of an organization’s knowledge base, data warehouses can store information broadly divided into three main categories:

• Historical data: Data warehouses enable decision-making using past lessons. The extent of historical data depends on storage space availability, but increasing storage costs more. It's advisable to store historical data relevant to your analyses selectively.
• Metadata: Metadata significantly simplifies the process of searching through stored data. It details the stored information according to schemas and established metadata standards. Its main purpose in a data warehouse is to improve data discoverability and governance.
• Derived data: When raw data is processed and combined with other data stores, the result is derived data. It yields fresh insights that may not have been found if the unstructured data was left unanalyzed.

✶ Find out which is more insightful: unstructured vs. structured data

Keep Your Data Warehouse in Order

Although unstructured data requires analysis to be categorized, companies can benefit immensely from data warehouses by consolidating all knowledge and data into one place. And with so many data types, a robust enterprise search engine can make management even easier by allowing companies to navigate all the folders and applications within a data warehouse. Unleash offers all these features in an easy-to-use interface. So, why not organize your data for smoother data access?

Unleash AI Search App

4.8/5(281 reviews)

Book a Demo