By Jordan Jones, Laurence Hart – Structured data is information governed by a database structure, organized into defined fields, usually within the context of a relational database. The database structure requires that data in the fields follow a prescribed format. For example, a date must have the format of a date and a name must be limited in length. The most common place that people encounter structured data is in the cells of a spreadsheet.

Structured data has many applications within businesses and is easy to search. It is found in finance, customer relationship management, supply chain and other applications where compliance to structures is keyed to business tasks.

Unstructured data, on the other hand, is data without rules and is not as searchable. Users who create unstructured data are writing free-form, rather than complying with structured data fields. There is minimal enforcement of any rules on the length of content, the format of the content or what content goes where. Despite the lack of formal structure, unstructured information — which users create in word processing programs, spreadsheets, presentation files, PDFs, social media feeds, and audio and video files — forms the bulk of the data created in an organization. Unstructured data might contain engineering design specifications, marketing plans or a summary of financial performance. Read On: