Data Integration

What Does Data Integration Mean?

Data integration is a process in which heterogeneous data is retrieved and combined as an incorporated form and structure. Data integration allows different data types (such as data sets, documents and tables) to be merged by users, organizations and applications, for use as personal or business processes and/or functions.

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Techopedia Explains Data Integration

Data integration primarily supports the analytical processing of large data sets by aligning, combining and presenting each data set from organizational departments and external remote sources to fulfill integrator objectives.

Data integration is generally implemented in data warehouses (DW) through specialized software that hosts large data repositories from internal and external resources. Data is extracted, amalgamated and presented as a unified form. For example, a user’s complete data set may include extracted and combined data from marketing, sales and operations, which is combined to form a complete report.

An example of data integration in a smaller paradigm is spreadsheet integration in a Microsoft Word document.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…