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Unstructured data (or unstructured information) refers to masses of (usually) computerized information which do either not have a data structure or one that is not easily readable by a machine. The term is imprecise: software that creates machine-processable structure exploits word morphology, sentence syntax, and other small- and large-scale patterns found in source materials to discern linguistic, auditory, and visual structure that is inherent in all forms of human communication.^[1] Examples of "unstructured data" may include audio, video and unstructured text such as the body of an email or word processor document.

Merrill Lynch estimates that more than 85% of all potentially usable business information originates in unstructured form.^[2]

Data with some form of structure may also be referred to as unstructured data if the structure is not helpful for the desired processing task. For example, an HTML Web page is tagged, but this form of structure is typically oriented towards formatting rather than capturing the meaning or function of the tagged elements in was that support automated processing of the information content of the page.

Data mining and text analytics techniques are different methods used to find patterns in, or otherwise interpret, this information. Common techniques for structuring text usually involve manual tagging with metadata or Part-of-speech tagging for further text mining-based structuring. UIMA provides a common framework for processing this information to extract meaning and create structured data about the information.

1. ^  Structure, Models and Meaning: Is "unstructured" data merely unmodeled?, Intelligent Enterprise, March 1, 2005.
2. ^  The problem with unstructured data, DMReview, February 2003.

• UIMA
• Data mining
• Metadata

• Database soup: Unstructured data as an oxymoron
• Two Worlds of Data – Unstructured and Structured

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