Understanding Azure storage types
Before we can choose an Azure data solution, we need to understand what our data is. As mentioned previously, data can be grouped into structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data:
Figure 4.1 – Examples of different types of data
Let’s look at them in detail.
Structured data
Structured data is data that has a predefined definition or schema and is managed in a column and row format – that is, rows of data separated into columns.
This type of data is sometimes stored as a comma-separated or other text-based file that conforms to a set format. By this, we mean it should be easy to read the data a row at a time and parse each bit of data or column. So, in the case of a comma-separated file, each row would be one record, and each column would be separated by a comma.
The key feature here is that we should know ahead of time what shape the data is in – that is, each field is in...