“The data we deal with is diverse. Users create content like blog posts, tweets, social network interactions, and photos. Servers continuously log messages about what they’re doing. Scientists create detailed measurements of the world around us. The internet, the ultimate source of data, is almost incomprehensibly large. This astonishing growth in data has profoundly affected businesses. Traditional database systems, such as relational databases, have been pushed to the limit. In an increasing number of cases these systems are breaking under the pressures of “Big Data.” Traditional systems, and the data management techniques associated with them, have failed to scale to Big Data”
http://www.manning.com/marz/BD_meap_ch01.pdf
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