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Data & Analytics · Foundational

Semi-Structured Data

Data with self-describing tags or keys but no rigid tabular schema, such as JSON, XML, Avro or Parquet with nested fields.

Definition

Semi-structured data can vary between records and contain nested arrays and objects. Warehouses handle it with types such as Snowflake VARIANT and BigQuery STRUCT/ARRAY and JSON, often flattening it for analysis.

Exam tip

JSON and XML are semi-structured, not unstructured.

Don't confuse it with

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