Storage
What are appropriate ways to store your data?
Summary
Data storage requirements for AI vary widely according to the application and the source material.
The filesystem is the foundational layer of storage. Its fundamental unit is a “file” — which can be text or binary, is not versioned, and is easily overwritten.
Object storage is an API over the filesystem that allows users to use a command on files (GET, PUT, DELETE) to a service, without worrying where they are actually stored. Its fundamental unit is an “object” — which is usually binary (images, sound files…).
The database is a persistent, fast, and scalable storage/retrieval of structured data. Its fundamental unit is a “row” (unique IDs, references to other rows, values in columns).
A data lake is the unstructured aggregation of data from multiple sources (databases, logs, expensive data transformations). It operates under the concept of “schema-on-read” by dumping everything in and then transforming the data for specific needs later.
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