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Welcome back.
I want to talk a little bit about data
models, as a run up to talk about
databases over the next couple of
segments.
So, this is a data science course, so we
know we have data.
So, the first question to ask is just,
where is this stored?
How do we store data?
And so one way of interpreting this
question is just to talk about
technology, right?
So, what technology do we use?
Well, we use magnetic media, and we might
use solid state drive more recently,
right?
And so both of these have the property
that they're not they persist, even when
the power goes out.
The data is safe, even when the power is
not on, okay, so non volatile storage,
right?
And so, a lot of the work in data base is
just all about work with data that's
stored on the non volatile storage media.
But another way of interpreting the
question is a little different, a little
more of the logical way we store, the
organization of the data.
And so we might ask you know, one way of
interpreting this question is what is the
data model we're using, okay?
So, there's not just bits on a disc, or
bits in a file.
What do we do?
Well, you know, in your personal
computer, or maybe even in your work
computer, you might store data sort of
hierarchically arranged in kind of these
nested folders, right?
That's one organization of data, and so
the data model here is kind of tree-like.
Another way is rows and columns and this
is what we'll talk what about in this
course, right?
So, in this case its a nasty file and
these are hits from a biological database
matches in a biological database for a
particular sequence.
And of course, you might have
spreadsheets that are a little funny,
right?
Maybe they look a little bit like rows
and columns or maybe they don't.
So, you have here sort of an embedded
table within a spreadsheet and so on.
So, you need to sort of, the idea is to
think about what data model is being