What is data source

You can use any text file as a data source, such as a plain text file or a database file. You can also create the file in spreadsheets from Excel, Quattro Pro, and similar programs. The data source can also be a simple table in a word processor document. Various applications can use a data source, including database applications like Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet programs, word processors like Microsoft Word, web browsers, and offline programs.

A data source file used in one program for one purpose might not be relevant in a different program, even if both programs use data source files.

In other words, a particular data source is subjective to the application using the data. A typical scenario when it comes to Microsoft Word using a data source is for Word to make a mail merge from data taken from an Excel document.

This file contains contacts that can be automatically written to a Word document for printing envelopes with the correct names and addresses. However, such a data source might not be useful in another context. Another data source might be a file that records the times that people check in to a doctor's office. A program can use the data source to aggregate all the check-in times and display the times on a website or use the information within an application, either for viewing the content or interacting with another data source.

An address book contact can be used in some scenarios because there's a column for a name, address, and email account. Data sources might also come from a live feed. For example, iTunes can use a live feed to play internet radio stations. Concretely, a data source may be a database, a flat file, live measurements from physical devices, scraped web data, or any of the myriad static and streaming data services which abound across the internet.

Imagine a fashion brand selling products online. To display whether an item is out of stock, the website gets information from an inventory database. In this case, the inventory tables are a data source, accessed by the web application which serves the website to customers. Focusing on how the term is used in the familiar database management context will help to clarify what kinds of data sources exist, how they work, and when they are useful.

Databases remain the most common data sources, as the primary stores for data in ubiquitous relational database management systems RDBMS. The DSN is defined within destination databases or applications as a pointer to the actual data, whether it exists locally or is found on a remote server and whether in a single physical location or virtualized.

The DSN is not necessarily the same as the relevant database name or file name, rather it is in an address or label used to easily reach the data at its source. Ultimately, the systems doing the ingesting of data determine the context for any discussion around data sources, so definitions and nomenclature vary widely and may be confusing.

This is especially true in more technical documentation. Though the diversity of content, format, and location for data is only increasing with contributions from technologies such as IoT and the adoption of big data methodologies, it remains possible to classify most data sources into two broad categories: machine data sources and file date sources.

Machine data sources have names defined by users, must reside on the machine that is ingesting data, and cannot be easily shared. Like other data sources, machine data sources provide all the information necessary to connect to data, such as relevant software drivers and a driver manager, but users need only ever refer to the DSN as shorthand to invoke the connection or query the data.

What are Data Source Types? Flat Files Few companies today have not used Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Watch the Big Data Webinar. In this manual, DBMS or database refers to a database program or engine.

Database also refers to a particular collection of data, such as a collection of Xbase files in a directory or a database on SQL Server. It is generally equivalent to the term catalog, used elsewhere in this manual, or the term qualifier in earlier versions of ODBC.

Types of Data Sources. Using Data Sources. Data Source Example.