{"id":1020,"date":"2025-12-22T22:28:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.data-principles.com\/?p=1020"},"modified":"2026-01-06T17:31:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:31:22","slug":"what-is-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.data-principles.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/22\/what-is-data\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Data?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Donavon Gooldy<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A leader of one of the consulting firms I\u2019ve worked for in my career answered our title question by stating that \u201cData is structured, unstructured, or semi-structured\u201d. That answer is the equivalent of saying that the package in which a product is delivered is the product. But his answer isn\u2019t surprising, given the dominance of data engineering thought in the Data & Analytics industry today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the domain of business, data is simply the documentary evidence of human business action. Each attribute value is a language element describing an aspect of an action performed. And of course, we perform business action according to a pattern dictated by business process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data without context is meaningless, and action is an abstract thing existing for a moment, which makes its context somewhat elusive. Further, data\u2019s business use demands a contextual form that aligns it to the nature of business questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Language isn\u2019t just a communication mechanism. It\u2019s the mental construct we use to perceive abstract ideas and give shape to abstract things.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Business questions are posed in a language narrative form. So, the data\u2019s context as a description of action must be in a narrative form, as business questions are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Chen did not create Entity Relationship Modeling notation to merely define database tables, which is the limit to which most of the industry uses it today. He gave ER Modeling a semantic foundation to set data within a narrative context describing the business action that it is evidence of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Narrative gives mental shape to the abstract subjects of data, and the model of the narrative gives visual form to that narrative. In turn, this form is the basis on which we organize data solutions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The narrative focuses modeling on business reality, rather than engineering notions of data. It places attributes according to named functions that perform the action, as illustrated in Figure 1. By doing so, we not only create a foundational form for data solutions, we also \u201csee\u201d the errors, gaps, and ambiguity in the model\u2019s narrative, to perfect the foundation. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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An entity names a function (a thing of action). The entity\u2019s relationship verb phrase denotes the specific action it performs, in relationship to another function. Each attribute is evidence of one of the entity\u2019s relationship actions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What an entity is, is what it does. Its function is defined by the action it performs, which its relationship predicates express. For instance, the following entity definitions summarize the predicate phrasing of its relationships:<\/p>\n\n\n\n