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Data Science & Analytics vocabulary · Data Pipelines and Warehousing

Batch processing

Meaning in data science & analytics, with examples

nounCommon term

In data science & analytics, batch processing means: Processing data in large groups at scheduled times, for example once every night, rather than handling each record the moment it arrives.

In Turkish: toplu işleme, yığın işleme, batch işleme

How it is used

The opposite is stream processing, or real-time processing. Batch jobs run on a schedule, and people talk about the 'nightly batch' or 'daily batch'. Most reporting dashboards rely on batch processing, so their data is a few hours old.

Example sentences

  1. We use batch processing for finance reports because they only need daily numbers.

  2. With batch processing, today's orders won't show up until tomorrow morning.

Common collocations

  • nightly batch
  • batch job
  • batch processing pipeline
  • batch versus streaming
  • data pipelineA series of automated steps that moves data from its sources, transforms it and delivers it to a destination such as a warehouse, dashboard or model.
  • ETLShort for extract, transform, load: the process of taking data out of source systems, cleaning and reshaping it, and loading it into a warehouse.
  • data warehouseA central database designed for analysis that stores cleaned, structured data from many systems, such as sales, marketing and finance, often over many years.
  • data lakeA large storage system that holds huge amounts of raw data in its original format, structured or not, until someone needs to process and analyse it.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Data Pipelines and Warehousing

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