Data Integration

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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.

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
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret 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 IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.