Data lake

Updated: 12/10/2023 by Computer Hope

Data lake may refer to any of the following:

1. A data lake is a term first coined by James Dixon in 2011 that describes a centralized repository for structured and unstructured (raw) data. A data lake allows companies to run multiple tools (e.g., analytics, processing, machine learning) on the same data.

A data lake is similar to a data warehouse, and some large organizations may use both:

  • A data warehouse to store structured SQL (Structured Query Language) data.
  • A data lake to store all other data.

Cloud providers like AWS (Amazon Web Services), Cloudera, Google Cloud, and Microsoft all have data lake solutions.

Note

Data lake was featured as a top term of 2011.

2. Data lake is a misspelling for data leak.

Artificial intelligence terms, Big data, Data, Data warehouse