Email often starts the process

Most archives start small, and many begin with one type of data like email (see "What to archive: Different data types," below). IT decides it needs to control growth, so they go looking for a system that can stub out attachments or move data out of the Exchange server. Then the legal department demands a complete set of email messages for a litigation-related search. Later, records management needs to retain certain messages for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley or other industry regulations.

Structured applications are inherently organized, although the identification, description and relation between data can be highly customized. In the enterprise, structured databases are often core applications with specialized administrators managing the data and archiving.

Systems like email have some struct...

Finally, there's the class of unstructured data that's so familiar in file systems. Although some basic systems are used to organize and describe these files, they can't be called truly structured as they lack information about their functional or organizational relationships.

Structured

Semi-structured

Unstructured

Example

Relational database

Email, medical images, document repositories

File servers, multimedia files

Organization

Highly organized with intrinsic interrelation

Moderately organized by meta data

Basic location and name "tree" organization

Meta data

Complex custom attributes

Some intrinsic attributes

Basic attributes and rarely used extended abilities

Search

Built around query language

Keyword search and categorization by meta data

Third-party tools for search

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