CockroachDB Glossary

Unstructured Data

What is Unstructured Data?

Unstructured Data is essentially the opposite of structured data: data that is not arranged with any kind of data model or schema and that can’t be easily adapted to a table format.

For example, datasets consisting of video or audio files are good examples of unstructured data. A traditional table structure would work for storing metadata about videos (such as title, description, Youtube link, etc.), but it is not a good fit for storing the videos themselves.

CockroachDB does support some types of unstructured data via its JSON support, but it was designed with primarily structured data in mind.