Data (usually) in digital form. Data is not the same as information; The general view is that data (together as a dataset or in processed form) can be transformed into information. Data generally comes in two forms: structured data and unstructured data. In addition, there is raw data and processed data. Data can be numerical, text-based and multimedia.
Examples of structured data: customer name and address details, customer numbers, product categories. In these cases, each piece of data has a clear definition of what the data looks like and what the data means. For example, a telephone number always consists of ten digits, possibly with one country code added to it.
Unstructured data is data without predetermined properties and characteristics: think of text, audio, images and video. In many cases, unstructured data can be transformed into structured data by analyzing the data, providing it with metadata and organizing it. This process is also called data enrichment.
Data also has a second meaning, namely streams of binary/digital data. In this context, transport is central: the exchange of data between different systems.