Big Data

In information technology, big data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools. The challenges include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, analysis, and visualization. The trend to larger data sets is due to the additional information derivable from analysis of a single large set of related data, as compared to separate smaller sets with the same total amount of data, allowing correlations to be found to "spot business trends, determine quality of research, prevent diseases, link legal citations, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions." ... (from the "Big_Data" article on wikipedia cited below.)

See:

• the wikipedia "Big_Data" article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
• "Big Data Challenges: Managing Scale in Ontological Systems" - by Bryan Thompson & Mike Personick (SYSTAP), presented at Ontology Summit 2012 - http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2012_02_09#nid33WL
• "Data-Intensive Geospatial Semantics" - by Krzysztof Janowicz (UCSB), presented at Ontology Summit 2012 - http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2012_02_16#nid34UM
  • In particular, Krzysztof Janowicz talks about the "Three V's of Big Data" - Volume, Variety, Velocity